


Insatiable

by Neyiea



Series: Ravenous [4]
Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: All of the things you would expect from this AU, Eldritch Abominations, Horror Elements, M/M, Monster Transformation, Possessive Behavior, Stephen King's IT References, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-27
Updated: 2020-12-12
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:55:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 26,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27228463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neyiea/pseuds/Neyiea
Summary: It's been a rough year and they who have been named 'The Joker' are still awake. They have time for one more hunt, and Bruce knows that whatever they're planning is going to be big, because they have come to love the notoriety of being a public figure. It will be big enough to keep 'The Joker' in the minds of every Gotham citizen even during their years-long slumber.Bruce can't let that happen.He makes a deal.There are consequences that he didn't foresee, and that they didn't think to warn him about.
Relationships: Jeremiah Valeska/Bruce Wayne, Jeremiah Valeska/Jerome Valeska/Bruce Wayne, Jerome Valeska/Bruce Wayne, Joker (DCU)/Bruce Wayne
Series: Ravenous [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1714627
Comments: 63
Kudos: 158





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> It's October and that means it's time ~~for Bruce to get railed by his monster boyfriends~~ to delve into this AU again. I am finally going to write ~~the DP that these awful, smitten clowns and their boyfriend obviously want~~ something like an conclusion, go me. 
> 
> Just gonna take one more moment to say that Desire by Meg Myers just encapsulates the mood of this series so well; such a good song, give it a listen you will not regret it. 
> 
> Enjoy. <3

Gotham has been quiet for the past couple of nights, the kind of quiet that Bruce has instinctively come to realize means something terrible is about to happen. Over the past year he’s learned to brace himself during the quiet, he’s learned to prepare himself for truly awful, horrifying spectacles. 

He cannot sleep when it is quiet like this.

He can hardly sleep, period. He dreads it. He dreads the possibility of dreaming. He dreads the occasional moments where he wakes up, his mouth attempting to form names that are not human, and tastes blood.

Memories from the past year flicker inside of his head; the first act of kidnapping wherein the abominations known only to Bruce as Jerome and Jeremiah were given the title of ‘The Joker’. The public acts of horrific crime that followed. The blood and the tears and the looming threat of what might happen if Batman ever lost one of their confrontations; dragged into a dark tunnel never to see the light of day again.

The sound of their laughter echoing eerily. The feeling of their breath on the back of Bruce’s neck. Green eyes glimmering as they watched him from the shadows. Playful. Taunting. Threatening. Promising. 

Bruce is worn and tired; he had not expected that anything about his calling would be easy even before he _returned_ and _remembered_ , but he had also not expected to be fighting literal monsters who, above all else, seemed to want to ensnare him—his attention and his touches and, mystifyingly, even his affection and love—all for themselves.

Almost a year has passed since they woke up. It is quiet. They have not yet intruded into his bedroom at night to say goodbye, which is something that he knows with certainty that they have done before. 

They’re planning something. Something big. Something spectacular. 

They have come to enjoy the notoriety of being a public figure. They feast upon fear just as much as they feast upon flesh, and stepping out as Joker allows them to make the whole city tremble even though all but Bruce truly believe that The Joker is just another costumed madman. While one puts on a gruesome show the other hunts, and Bruce drives himself into the ground with the effort to stop them both, but he’s not always able to save everyone. 

When he hears screaming, when he sees a child in a hungry monster’s arms, he always makes the same decision. He always chooses to save them, first. 

They do it on purpose; pulling him in two different directions. It’s their grim version of a game. They are strong and capable and awful, and they could bring the entire city to its knees. Bruce can stop them for a few moments at a time, but not forever. Even if he hadn’t vowed not to kill, he isn’t even sure if they _can_ die. He’s seen them get hit by police cars hard enough to get thrown into the air, he’s seen them get shot by other Gotham Rouges sick of their games, he’s even seen one of them lose and regenerate a hand. They are occasionally stunned for a moment or two, but no matter what happens to them they always brush it off, they always keep coming. They only cease when they’re asleep. When they’re awake they are relentless. 

He cannot stop them forever. 

But what if he could at least stop their last revolting plot before they slipped into slumber?

What if there was even the slimmest chance of it?

It is quiet, and underneath the city in the dark of man-made underground tunnels he searches for an entrance that had never shown up on any map or plan that he’d been able to get his hands on. He had found it a few months into Joker’s appearance, but had always been too wary to go down it when he knew that they were active. When he’d first started searching the old subway tunnels and the sewers he was sure that it would only take one wrong move, one false step, and he would be stuck underground forever. That feeling hadn’t changed, despite the fact that he was now purposefully seeking out a doorway leading into what he could only imagine was a terrible, dark chasm; a place where monsters chose to dwell. If he entered into the tunnel, he may never find his way out again. If he entered into the tunnel, they would trap him. If he entered into the tunnel, they would keep him.

_We want fear and flesh and you, precious thing._

If they had him, would their hunger for fear and flesh diminish?

Bruce settles at the entrance of a tunnel that doesn’t look at all out of place, masterfully crafted to blend in with the surrounding architecture. The water is shallow, here, and it flows inward at a slight downward angle; down, down, into unknown depths. Down where sunlight could never reach. Down where perhaps the only illumination was given off by dim speckles of light that appeared as unfamiliar, alien stars. Even with his cowl enhancing his vision, he can barely see past a few feet into the entrance. 

Whatever is in this water reaches them, eventually.

He’s sure of it.

He’d thought of seeking them out and luring them towards him in a location where he felt as though he had more control, but in the end the idea of inviting them into any place where he felt at home seemed too invasive. It was something that should happen as rarely as possible. It was something that should have never happened in the first place. 

If they are to be invited into his home again, it will because they have given in to him just as much as he has given in to them.

Because if they do not give in… If they do not meet him in the middle…

He doesn’t want to think about what that would mean, although it is obvious. It had been obvious ever since he came back and remembered. It had been obvious even back when he was trying to drink his troubles away; he just hadn’t looked closely enough, or put enough stock into their possessive remarks and touches, back then.

They want to keep him. They mean to keep him. By force, or by trickery, or by making him willingly trade his life for another’s. But they haven’t managed to ensnare him, yet.

There is something—perhaps that same force which connected them to Bruce—that makes it difficult for them to carry out the abduction which they desire the most.

Bruce is different from every human that they have hunted before.

Bruce has power.

He removes one of his gloves. He takes a Batarang from his utility belt. He presses the blade against his palm and watches the blood well up. They would likely be able to sense him from this close if he was afraid, but Bruce is not afraid. He is tired, and he is resolute.

And he wants to make a deal before whatever final act it is that they’re planning has a chance to take place. 

It will be grand, because they’ve come to revel in the attention garnered by being an infamous criminal. It will be enough for them to be remembered as Joker, so that when they return after their years long sleep they can pick back up where they left off. Perhaps they will find a human with facial features and a body structure similar enough to theirs, and they will drive him mad with waking nightmares, and they will paint his face with familiar patterns of greasepaint, and they will leave him for the police to find with fresh blood splattered on his hands and face and a carefully chosen murder weapon next to a carefully chosen corpse. Perhaps they will allow this human puppet to be imprisoned in Arkham for years, and then when they come back they will stage an escape, and then they will eat him in order to rid themselves of loose ends.

And then their vicious playing and feasting will start all over again. 

And once again Bruce will be the sole keeper of knowledge that Joker was not what he appeared to be. And once again Bruce will wonder what wicked force was able to smother Gotham’s collective memory. And once again Bruce will wish that there was a way to tell the truth without inciting mass hysteria. 

It is lonely, to hold onto such a profound secret. 

Bruce reaches his hand into the cavernous mouth of a tunnel that he knows is a doorway that no mortal has ever crossed though and lived to speak about it. Blood steadily drips from his palm into the stream of water below. They know the smell of his blood, he is sure that they do, because he has seen them scent the air when his skin has been broken, and because they revel in making him bleed almost as much as they obviously want to lap it off of his skin and drink it straight from the source.

They’ve managed to a couple of times during this period of wakefulness. During fights they’ve pinned him down and scratched at him with razor nails and teeth. They’ve disguised themselves as dates, back when he was still trusting enough to attempt a playboy persona, and have roughly bitten his mouth and tongue during kisses before Bruce was able to catch glimpses of the true face hidden behind the false face.

They have all but told him directly that they hunger for him above anything else and yet, for all that they have gleefully fought him, they have not ever actually tried to devour him. The hunger that they feel for him is different. The hunger that they feel for him is lustful. 

He hopes that he’s not miscalculating his importance to them. 

He applies disinfectant and a bandage to his palm. He pulls his glove back on. He waits in the dark for one minute, five, almost ten…

And then his hair begins to stand on end and his body breaks out into goosebumps. 

He cannot see them, but they can see him. 

“I’ve come to talk to you,” he speaks into the all-consuming dark. “If you try anything, I’ll leave.”

There is a sound up ahead in the tunnel, too distant to be clear, as if even now they are attempting to lure him inside even though he had come this far of his own volition. Covetous and greedy, that was what they were. Always craving more, more, more. They were too used to getting what they wanted.

Most of the time, anyway. Bruce had been a lone singularity up until now, with the unsettling quiet slowly driving him to desperation. 

“I’m not coming any closer.” He cannot stand the idea of stepping inside only to have the entrance to the tunnel collapse behind him. He cannot stand the idea of being forced to leave his city behind. The next time he comes here they will be sleeping, and perhaps then he will sink deeper into the dark, but not now. “You either talk to me here, or not at all.”

There is a hiss. There are dozens of pin-point flashes of green. There is—

—a face. And another face.

When they are underground, or when they are away from the eyes of the public, they do not wear the greasepaint disguise of a simple madman. The creatures who had once, years ago, introduced themselves as Jerome and Jeremiah stand before Bruce, having suddenly appeared from the shadows in a way that would have made anyone else flinch back. Bruce is far too used to them by now to react as other humans do.

And he could sense them growing nearer. But he usually tries to ignore that for his own peace of mind.

They stand out of reach of each other, Bruce and the monsters who are fixated upon him, knowing just how capable they each are of causing damage.

“Batsy,” Jerome croons, eyes roving over Bruce intently. “Have you come to wish us luck on our final hunt?”

“Or,” Jeremiah starts with a grin. “Have you come to join us in feasting? We’d make sure that you never go hungry.”

Bruce’s empty stomach churns at the idea.

“You know me better than to entertain those kinds of fantasies,” he says lowly and without inflection. The twins chuckle under their breath, smiles widening, eyes flashing. Their excitement is practically a tangible presence in the air. Bruce has never sought them out like this before. They know something is about to happen, even if they don’t know what it is. “I’ve come to ask you something.”

“Asking us to stop has never stopped us before, _sweetheart_.”

“And favours have prices that you might not be willing to pay, _darlin’_.”

“What if it wasn’t a request? What if it wasn’t a favour?” Bruce stands tall before them, impassive in the face of their cutting looks and twitching fingers and wet mouths. “What if it was a deal?”

Whatever dark force connects them, it has given Bruce an edge that no one else has ever had. He’s the only human who has ever been able to hurt them. It marks him as being different. As being important. It has only made their interest in him grow. What if that interest meant that Bruce was enough? What if Bruce was enough to make them stop?

The twins stare at him, as intense and eerie as always.

Whatever their final act as Joker is going to be during this cycle, Bruce cannot allow it to happen.

“You want fear and flesh and _me._ ” Something behind their eyes is sparking to life, the beginnings of realization. “You have played with me, and you have fought me, and you have hurt me and made me bleed, but you want more, don’t you?” A rhetorical question, he knows that they do. “You want what you had with me ten years ago.” Their grins are widening to the point where it’s obvious that their mouths aren’t human, but Bruce doesn’t look away from them. He remembers, now. He remembers everything. He’s spent many nights lying awake, sick at the idea that when he’d kissed them the blood of a slaughtered human may have been transferred into his mouth. Sick at the memory of how much he had enjoyed what they’d done together. “You want more than what you had with me ten years ago.” They want him in a way that they have never wanted anyone. Their teeth are sharpening and extending, drool is beginning to drip from their mouths. They are so, so _hungry_. Always so ravenous when they look upon him. 

Inhuman. Insatiable. Empty voids given consciousness and bodies and lined with too many teeth. 

If they could have him, would he be enough?

At least this once, he thinks forlornly. At least let it be enough this once.

He doesn’t want any more death this year. He will be better prepared for the next cycle. 

“So are you willing to hear me out, or not?”

They stare at him, unblinking—they haven’t blinked at all since they first appeared, but that is another unsettling thing about them that Bruce has become too-used to—and Bruce already knows what their answer will be.

x-x-x

He is pushed into darkness. There is a swooping sensation in his stomach, the dizzy feeling of falling from a great height, a sudden absence of even the dim light of the tunnel. It lasts for just a few seconds, but it is enough to leave him disoriented.

And then he is stumbling out of the shadowed corner of his own bedroom, and he is not alone.

Jerome and Jeremiah surround him, encapsulate him, trap him. Their fingers wrench underneath protective plates of armour and their nails tear through material manufactured to withstand knife-punctures and close-range gunshots. It is a terrible reminder that, had they ever really wanted to kill him, nothing could have truly protected him from them. It is a terrible reminder that he is not as safe as everyone else—criminals and civilians and even Alfred—would think that he is. 

His breath hitches as he feels the skimming of claws against now-bare skin. He had promised himself that he wouldn’t feel afraid, because he knew that it would only spur them on, but panic builds up in his chest despite it. He tries to smother the feeling, but it’s too late.

They can sense it.

Jerome inhales sharply before crowding even further into his space, dragging his nose against Bruce’s neck and huffing against his pulse-point. Bruce can feel the wet of saliva dribble against his shoulder.

“You smell so good, Brucie.” His hand lifts to the cowl, and when he finds that the protective electric charge that had once thwarted his attempts to take off Bruce’s mask has been disengaged he makes a low, pleased sound, before one finger slips up underneath and pushes outwards. “And we’re gonna make you smell like you’re ours. You won’t ever be able to wash it away.”

The entire facepiece cracks, as if it’s as fragile as an eggshell. The fractured portions fall away from Bruce’s face and onto the floor, and when Jeremiah steps forward they shatter further under his heel. 

“There you are,” Jeremiah hisses, acidic eyes roving over Bruce’s mostly uncovered face. “There you are, precious.” His fingers drag down the glove covering Bruce’s injured hand. “The things we’re going to do to you, the things we’re going to do with you.” Fabric shreds under his claws, and Bruce’s skin welts under the pressure. “We’ll make the link between us unbreakable.”

Bruce opens his mouth to speak—he hates when they speak so candidly of his connection to them, he wishes that it didn’t exist, he wishes that they didn’t exist—but Jerome’s hand digs underneath what remains of the cowl to twist into his hair and turn his head.

The kiss is wet, brutal, consuming. A slick tongue forces its way into Bruce’s mouth and he closes his eyes and tries to keep his breathing steady. They are desperate and hungry, and he’d expected this, really, but it was one thing to expect it and another thing to experience it.

He lifts a trembling hand and winds it into Jerome’s hair. He drags his tongue along the underside of Jerome’s and tries not to gag when he feels the pointed tip slide against the back of his throat.

Bruce feels Jeremiah shred off the rest of the glove, feels him tear off the bandage, feels him bring the scabbed slit up to his mouth to re-open the wound. Bruce doesn’t jerk at the sting of pain, but his heart twists sickly in his chest at the way Jeremiah drags his tongue against it, slow and almost sensual, before greedily sucking three of Bruce’s fingers into his wet mouth. 

Their flesh is an unearthly cool, but the sensation of it is too familiar to seem strange. Bruce kisses Jerome back and presses his fingers against Jeremiah’s tongue, wanting to be enough, hoping to be enough. At least this once, at least this once… 

He feels Jeremiah’s sharp teeth skim against his fingers once, twice, then almost hard enough to break skin the third time. He feels even more drool begin to coat his hand and he opens his eyes to look at him and—panic spiking again—snatches his hand back when it looks as though Jeremiah is preparing to bite.

“You don’t have to worry,” Jeremiah rasps, licking his lips, nostrils flaring as he breathes heavily. Scenting the air. Scenting his fear. Jerome pulls back to look at Bruce, too, and their eyes are equally hot and their expressions are equally covetous. “I won’t hurt you too bad. I just want a little taste of you. We’d never hurt you enough to kill you.”

_What’s a little maiming between lovers?_

“If you don’t try to bite my fingers off again I won’t feel the need to worry.”

“What about one?” Jeremiah surges closer, eyes sparking. Bruce can’t tell if Jeremiah is attempting humour, or if he’s being serious, or if he’s just trying to make Bruce afraid on purpose. Whatever the reason, he doesn’t like it. “Just one finger. Would you really miss one? Oh, I would savour that piece of you more than I have ever savoured anything that I have eaten, Bruce.”

“Yes, I would miss one.” Bruce’s hand, drenched in drool, reaches out to clasp Jeremiah’s jaw tighter than he would ever dare to hold another human. At least with his anger igniting his fear is subsiding into nothingness. Jeremiah’s chest rumbles, like a purr, at the attention. “I can’t grow them back like you seem to be able to. You can feast upon my blood and tears and fear, but I won’t let you consume my flesh and bone.” 

“Don’t be too hard on him, darlin’,” Jerome croons at him, beginning to push Bruce back, back, until his legs brush against his bed. “If I could do it without your fragile human body bleeding out I’d open up your chest and wrench back your ribs so that I could lay a kiss upon your heart. I wouldn’t devour it, I promise,” he whispers hotly, “but I’d think about what it would be like; warm and sweet and dripping wet, the best heart that I’d ever had in my mouth.”

“Stop talking about eating me,” he snaps. He digs his nails into the skin of Jeremiah’s face, his hand twists tighter into Jerome’s hair and tugs hard. They both shudder at the stark reminder that Bruce is more than capable of hurting them, too. He has power. He has resisted them all year. No one else ever had, and no one else ever could. They liked that he was stubborn and could challenge them, but they’ve been aching for the day where he would give into them. There was something significant about him freely giving instead of them selfishly taking. There must be, or else these greedy creatures would not have waited for him to approach them to take more than the little that they had. “I didn’t invite you in so that you could wonder at what it would have been like if you hadn’t decided against slaughtering me as a child.”

“It would have been a waste to eat you back then,” Jerome says. “Though you were such a sweet little morsel.”

“It’s much better this way,” Jeremiah says. “We can have you forever, this way.”

Bruce presses his lips together. His interest in reminding them of his mortality is nearly non-existent. They—who have been going through cycles of hunting, eating, sleeping, for at the very least hundreds of years; who at best viewed humans as nothing of consequence and at worst viewed them as a meal—might not even realize that even though Jerome hadn’t killed Bruce the first time that they’d crossed paths, the amount of years that they could have with him had always been numbered. 

It would almost be sad, if Bruce could scrounge up feelings of sympathy for these murderous abominations. Someday he will be dead, and just as they love him in their own monstrous, unearthly way, they will perhaps mourn him in their own monstrous, unearthly way.

“Forever is a long time,” he says lowly, “are you sure you won’t get bored of me?”

In hindsight he probably should have expected their reaction. They don’t necessarily prefer talking or communicating maturely when instead they can act, because pinning him between their bodies in order to kiss him and touch him in a way that he won’t be able to retreat from is enough of an answer in their minds. It says, ‘how could we ever get bored of you?’ to them. It says, ‘can’t you tell that we love you?’ to them. It says, ‘your ours’ and it feels like the truth, because when they crowd him like this he feels as if he was made to fit in the space between them.

Jerome at his back, hands pointedly skimming along the front of his body as he lays stinging kisses along Bruce’s neck, not biting hard enough to draw blood yet. Jeremiah in front, hands cradling Bruce’s face and kissing him as if he could never get enough, his slick tongue dragging over the blunt edges of Bruce’s teeth. He’s pressed so tightly between them. Trapped with nowhere to go and nothing to do but accept their attention in order to keep them focussed on him. He reaches out, running a hand through Jeremiah’s dark hair. He reaches down, laying a hand over top of Jerome’s and interlocking their fingers. 

It feels good to be slotted between them again, and they’ve barely gotten started.

He always did have a weakness for the sensation of being wanted and loved, even if it was in a possessive way.

Bruce’s pulse races as a familiar heat begins to ignite inside of him. He will surrender to it, for now. If he doesn’t hold up his end of the deal they may end up hunting before sleep, after all, and then this all would have been for nothing. He presses back against Jerome. He pushes his tongue into Jeremiah’s mouth. A thigh slides between his legs. Teeth break the skin of his neck.

It stings.

It makes his heart pound even harder.

Made to fit. Made for them. Connected to them. He doesn’t like to think too hard about it, even though he must embrace it. This cycle they will go to sleep with empty stomachs, and in return Bruce will play along with their possessive fantasies. He belongs to no one but himself, that hadn’t changed, but he could still pretend just as he had years ago.

He could pretend for these greedy bastards, who he might actually like were it not for their very nature. He could enjoy pretending. He could tell himself afterwards that that was all it had been; pretending.

He breaks the kiss and begins to strip away his ruined suit, progress aided by the clinging hands of covetous beasts, and then he is laid out on his bed in a way that is familiar; feeling things that he has felt before, things he wishes he hadn’t felt, things he cannot seem to help but feel again.

“Fuck me.” He wants it. He wants them. Even if he hates that he does, even if he can’t stand them. “Show me that I’m yours.” They will give into him, because that is what they want; to possess him, to keep him, to have him forever. 

“You already are,” Jeremiah begins, peppering wet kisses all across his face.

“You were made to be ours,” Jerome finishes, ducking down to drag his tongue along the broken skin on Bruce’s neck. 

“Prove it,” he challenges. He feels both dread and heat as their eyes spark. They will be eager to prove it; that he’s theirs, that he doesn’t need anyone but them. “I want you to.”

“We will.” Jerome draws away, his extended tongue gliding along the underside of Bruce’s chin. “We’ve been very patient with you, Bruce. You’ve made us wait for so long. You should have come home earlier. You should have never left.”

“What’s a few years of waiting, compared to the span of your life?”

“Two entire waking years without you, when we could have had you?” Jeremiah’s teeth scrape against his cheek, too shallow to break skin. “Too long.”

You could have had me, Bruce thinks in the back of his mind, if you didn’t stalk and eat people. 

You could have had me, if you hadn’t gone back to sleep ten years ago.

But they are what they are. Empty voids who hunger and hunt whenever they are awake. Entities that could play at being human, but were far from it. What they do is horrifying and cruel, but perhaps cruelty is in their nature. Bruce knows next to nothing about what they actually are, and he doesn’t exactly trust them to tell him the truth should he ever ask questions. He’s not sure if they would lie to him, but he absolutely believes that they would bend the truth if it suited them. 

He detests them, but hatred is not the only thing that he feels.

Despite the coolness of their fingers he feels hot where they’ve touched him, as if branded by them. He’s not sure if they’re able to do it on purpose or not.

His blood is rushing, his pulse is thrumming. 

“I want to see you,” he says. “All of you.”

“Greedy boy,” Jerome praises, stripping out of his clothing. 

“We would never deny you anything,” Jeremiah coos, pressing a lingering kiss to Bruce’s cheek before he follows in his brother’s footsteps.

You would never deny me anything that you want, too, is what you mean, Bruce thinks. He allows the thought to drift away, because he cannot afford to linger on it. He cannot afford anger when what they want is affection. He cannot afford hate when what they want is love. He cannot afford to get so caught up in their nature that he cannot go through with this. 

He cannot let his city down. 

“We’ll take care of you.”

“We learned how, just for you.”

There was once a time, before he knew even a fraction of the truth about them, where he had missed them. No one else had ever made him feel the way that they did. No one else ever could. They awaken something hungry and wanting inside of him. He needs to embrace it.

“We’re going to take you properly this time. Mark you as ours.”

“Cover you in our scent, fill you up with it, drench you in it.”

Bruce’s heart lurches in his chest.

“That sounds disgusting.” Drenched in it. Drenched in what? Blood and sweat and spit and come. It sounds vulgar. It sounds depraved. He can’t help wondering what it’s going to feel like.

He wonders if it will hurt him, and if he will once again feel the affinity for pain that they seemed to inspire in him. He wonders if it will make him feel alive. 

He both dreads and hopes that it will.

Jerome kisses him and Bruce surrenders to it, kissing back and trying to keep his mind empty of anything other than what he is being made to feel. Wet kisses, sharp teeth skimming his lips, a clawed hand dragging up his side, a fist in his hair, a hard cock nudging pointedly against his hip, fingers pinching and twisting at his nipples hard enough that he jerks. The ensuing, rasping laughter makes him feel a flicker of annoyance, and he settles his teeth around Jerome’s tongue as a warning that ultimately goes unheeded, he just laughs more as Bruce’s nipples are pinched even harder.

And then there is a hand locking around his wrists and pinning them to his chest.

And then there is a weight on his lap.

Bruce breaks the kiss with Jerome to look up at Jeremiah, who seems pleased with himself for stealing Bruce’s attention away. One of his hands is a vice around both of Bruce’s wrists, the force behind his grip almost enough to bruise. His other hand drags down, down Bruce’s abdomen, playfully skirting through dark curls before drifting back up to graze against his face. At the edges of Bruce’s awareness he can sense Jeremiah’s eager desire, like a faint buzzing under his own skin. 

Bruce gazes up at him, even as Jerome shifts even closer and licks the side of his face in an animalistic display of affection.

“What are you doing?”

“Do you remember what I told you last time?” Jeremiah grins down at him, voice shaking with poorly concealed laughter. He presses fingers against Bruce’s mouth, and Bruce’s lips part for him to delve inside. “Sweetheart.” He rocks his fingers against Bruce’s tongue, and Bruce shudders as he remembers something bigger and hotter and better than fingers in his mouth. Jeremiah inhales sharply, eyelashes fluttering in a way that leaves Bruce wondering if he’s putting on a show. Jerome makes a pleased sound and rubs against him, absolutely impossible to ignore. “I’m going to pin you down and ride you until you’re crying.”

He drags his fingers out of Bruce’s mouth only to suck them into his own maw, grinning and making slick, slurping noises that Bruce should probably find gross.

He wants to cast doubt on Jeremiah’s intent—he’d like to think that he’s too old, now, to be reduced to tears by something like this—but if he does he just knows that Jeremiah is going to try even harder to get that reaction out of him. He continues to stare up at him, instead, as Jerome huffs against his neck like he wants to bite Bruce all over again.

Jeremiah’s fingers slip out of his mouth and he leans down for a multitude of stinging kisses which leave Bruce’s lips feeling raw and chafed. Jerome settles a hand against his opposite hip, holding Bruce in place as he grinds against him, nails pricking into skin. He’s going to be riddled with punctures and scratches and bruises by the end if this. He’s going to be marked in a number of vulgar, disgusting, wonderful ways. He’s going to be…

_Theirs._

His heart beats, rabbit-like, in his chest. He feels warm, wanted. He wishes he didn’t, but he does.

He closes his eyes and tries to stop his racing thoughts. 

It doesn’t work.

And they don’t let him keep his eyes closed for long, anyway.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I slammed this out so fast because I wanted to post _something_ on Halloween. Kinda proud of my work ethic, lol. Might end up tagging something new next chapter, but everything in here probably shouldn't be a surprise. They're monsters, they're kinda weird or gross sometimes, whatever.

“Do you remember,” Jeremiah begins, back arcing as he reaches behind himself with soaking fingers. “Our little dance at the Ace Chemicals Plant?”

Bruce’s lips tug into a frown and he means to say something cutting—that was a truly awful night, and he wishes that he could forget it entirely—but he feels a sudden slick pressure run down his perineum and his breath abruptly catches. 

“I wanted to do this to you then, after I threw you against that vat so hard that you ended up preciously stunned.” Jeremiah grins down at him, petting his fingers against Bruce’s cleft with very obvious intent while shifting over top of him, unsubtly grinding their cocks together. “If you hadn’t recovered so quickly I would have. You were so otherworldly lit up by that green radiation, sweetheart, I wanted to strip you down to nothing to see how much I could make you shine.” The steady stroking of his fingers becomes firmer.

“Your blood looked so dark in that light,” Jerome whispers directly into Bruce’s ear, playfully nipping at the cartilage. He’d only shown up towards the end of that confrontation, as if drawn there by the scent spilling from Bruce’s freshly split lip and steadily bleeding temple. Bruce remembers struggling to stand while feeling much fainter than he’d ever want to be while in their presence. Bruce remembers trying to smother the increasing worry that if they worked together to drag him into a shadowy corner he wouldn’t be able to escape. Bruce remembers that when he’d finally fallen asleep afterwards he’d dreamt about them fucking him in the eerie green light, and he’d woken up feeling both revolted with himself and empty. “Almost black, almost like ours.” 

“If your little _cat-friend_ —” A fingertip shallowly presses inside of him, and Bruce’s hands twitch. Whether he wants to push Jeremiah away or reach out to him, he’s not even sure. “—hadn’t ruined everything by showing up—” Jerome’s claws are digging in even deeper, now; the pair of them tended to become even more brutally possessive when they remembered the existence of Bruce’s oldest friend. “—we could have had such a good time together.” Jeremiah’s eyes are icy, strikingly void of the heat that they usually have when they looked upon Bruce. 

“She touched you that night.” Jerome’s claws begin to drag, and Bruce grits his teeth against the pain even as the sensation of it damningly makes his blood rush. 

“We could smell your blood on her.” Jeremiah’s finger presses deeper and his grip on Bruce’s wrists becomes so tight that Bruce can easily imagine that his bones have begun to grind together. 

“She checked to make sure that I wasn’t concussed.” There had been a point where it seemed as if, maybe, she meant to lean in towards him, but he’d drawn away before she could. He knew that he couldn’t let her get too close.

Jeremiah’s finger withdraws. Jerome’s claws retract.

Fingertips that are damp with blood settle against his cheek to turn his head to the side. Jerome’s eyes are just as cold as Jeremiah’s. If they had ever caught Selina doing anything with him, they would have slaughtered her no matter how much Bruce would hate them for doing it.

“You don’t need her,” Jerome states assertively. “You don’t need anyone else.” He darts forward to drag his tongue against Bruce’s closed lips. When he retreats Bruce can see him bring his bloody fingers up to his mouth for a taste, but Jeremiah steals Bruce’s attention away by bucking down against him.

“You only need us.” Jeremiah raises up, and Bruce can catch the slight movement of his hand behind himself for a few short seconds before he uses it to grab onto the base of Bruce’s cock.

Jerome presses a kiss to his cheek, and then his cool presence against Bruce’s side draws away completely. It is difficult to spare much thought to what he might be planning, though, when Jeremiah smirks and repositions himself over Bruce.

“We’ll prove it to you again, Bruce,” Jeremiah promises. “We’ll keep proving it, until it finally sticks in that pretty little head of yours.” He starts lowering himself onto Bruce’s cock, and Bruce is only barely aware that there are nails skimming up and down his legs, a sign that Jerome has found a new spot to settle.

Bruce’s breathing turns shallow and he struggles to keep still as Jeremiah settles on top of him, the iciness of his eyes gaining a wicked heat all over again. He is slick, slicker than Bruce thinks those few seconds of preparation with his fingers should have made him, and tight. He feels good, even when he’s not moving, and judging by his conceited smile he obviously knows it. Jerome leans behind his brother, his fingers tapping rhythmically against Bruce’s thighs, settling his chin on Jeremiah’s shoulder and looking down at Bruce with a vicious smirk. Bruce’s eyes flicker over to him for a moment and his smirk widens unnaturally, the scarred corners of his mouth seeming to part to showcase a flash of even more teeth. 

“We’ll prove it to you even after you realize it’s the truth, too.” Jerome utters something in their malevolent mother-tongue, then, and Jeremiah breathily repeats it afterwards. Staticky microphone feedback whines in Bruce’s ears underneath the sound of their voices. Their gaze softens to something that Bruce could almost be tricked into thinking is a normal display of fondness, even as his temples pound with a headache that comes as quickly as it goes. 

The pressure of Jeremiah’s grip loosens, just a little.

Bruce doesn’t fight to get out of his hold.

What did you just say, he wants to ask, but at the same time he doesn’t think he could bear to know the answer for certain. Darlin’, sweetheart, mine, ours; they had more than enough names for him already that they felt confident enough to say to his face in languages that he could understand. Whatever they had said to him, or about him, in the privacy of a dialect that Bruce couldn’t even attempt to speak without choking on a mouthful of blood, while looking at him like that…

He doesn’t need an additional reminder that, for all that they are unspeakably awful and proud of it, all that they feel towards him is unrepentantly genuine. 

Jeremiah shifts over top of him, slow and unsteady; experimental. His eyes stay locked on Bruce’s face with a truly unnerving amount of intensity. Try as he might Bruce can’t _not_ react, especially when Jeremiah begins to fall into a rhythm, his movements becoming confident and firm. His fingers twitch, his back arcs, his mouth falls open to draw in deeper breaths. 

A high sound builds up in his throat when he feels one of Jerome’s fingers pick up where Jeremiah had left off. His heels dig into his bed and his hips roll upward, and Jeremiah grunts before chuckling under his breath. 

“You want to reduce me to tears.” Bruce really hopes they don’t actually reduce him to tears. He’s not seventeen anymore, he’s almost thirty. “But isn’t it cheating if Jerome is touching me too?”

Claws prick into the skin of one of his thighs as a second finger—it almost feels like too much, too fast, Bruce can’t choke back a gasp and his cheeks burn at the following rumble of Jerome’s laughter—abruptly joins the first. 

“It’s not cheating.” Jeremiah settles his free hand on Bruce’s stomach and leans down, the rocking of his hips becoming faster. “Though we often work alone we are, as you have often called us, twins. We hatched together, we have hunted and eaten together.” Jeremiah lifts up slightly on his knees and comes down hard, head lolling back, eyelashes fluttering. He is beautiful despite the unnatural cast of his face and the caustic quality of his eyes and the blood of numerous Gotham citizens forever staining his hands and his mouth. “We have made you cry, and beg, and bleed together. All of the most important things, we have done as one.”

Bruce’s mind buzzes with retorts that seem to get stuck in his mouth. He feels kisses being pressed against his scratched thigh as two fingers crook and drag inside of him, making him jolt and draw in a shaking breath. Jeremiah leans down to gently press their lips together, and his hand finally unclamps from around Bruce’s wrists so that he can cradle Bruce’s face between both palms. His movements become less frantic, and Bruce’s eyes briefly fall shut because he has to adjust to the feeling of tenderness when he’d actually expected things to become more brutal the longer that it went on. When Jeremiah rises back up they are both looking down at him again, eyes dark, expressions terrible purely because Bruce knows that the softness there masks far too many sins to count.

“Together we dreamt of you, together we missed you.” Jeremiah’s voice is honeyed sweetness. He is holding onto Bruce as if Bruce truly is something precious to him—precious to them—and Bruce would rather be hurt by them than be held tenderly, because affection makes his emotions tangle into a spectacular knot where pulling the right string could make him come undone completely. “Together we love you.”

He’d known that it was coming, but his chest hitches with an unfinished breath all the same.

Heat floods through him, his muscles tense and relax, he digs his fists into the sheets because if he reaches for Jeremiah—if he is holding and held and being lavished with this sweeter attention that he cannot distance himself from—he’s not going to able to stay as in control of himself as he _needs_ to be when he is around they who shamelessly take advantage of any weakness that they can find. 

“We love you, Bruce.” Soft little bites and kisses are pressed against the insides of his thighs as Jerome’s fingers rub a teasing circle against him before withdrawing completely. “You’re still not told that enough, are you? Poor thing.” Jerome crawls up beside him again, grabbing for one of Bruce’s hands and interlocking their fingers in a carefully studied and learned act of romance. Something like this is not natural, not for them. It’s almost enough to make Bruce’s heart ache. “ _We’d_ tell you more often, darlin’, but you hardly ever stick around long enough for us to say it.”

Because Bruce can’t stand it when they tell him. When he can get away with it he pretends that he can’t hear them at all. It’s easier, that way.

He can’t pretend, now. 

Jeremiah’s fingers graze against his cheeks and Jerome presses kisses to his knuckles. Bruce wishes their wilder actions hadn’t been put on the backburner, because now this feels like it’s something meant to last, meant to linger, meant to happen again. Like this is an amorous evening planned by lovers, and not a last-ditch effort to make sure that Jerome and Jeremiah don’t kill and eat any more people before they go to sleep.

“We love you more than anyone and anything.” 

“We love you more than another human ever could.”

“You love me in a way that I can’t understand,” Bruce interjects, shivering, feeling more on edge from this softer attention. Can’t understand, won’t understand, refuses to understand; same difference. There is a disconnect between them; the differences in their natures. It cannot be overcome by a constant repetition of ‘we love you’ even if hearing it makes Bruce feel weak in the knees, as if he’s a lonely teenager all over again. He should flip Jeremiah over and put an end to these ridiculous mockeries of affectionate gestures before they get too far under his skin and leave him feeling raw and wanting of more than he should ever dare to want from them. Fuck into him and bite him and bruise him with Jerome at his back, digging his teeth into the line of Bruce’s spine and dragging until blood began to trickle down his ass and thighs. He probably should, to get this over with. They’d work themselves into a frenzy over him once enough of his blood was split, and in the morning Bruce would feel more like he’d been in a fight than like he’d gotten fucked. 

Or—in a way, even worse—like he’d made love.

They want to keep him. There is something significant in the act of him freely giving as opposed to the act of them selfishly taking. They are being gentle and adoring—behaviour that they must have learned by observing people for reasons other than figuring out how to make them experience the most fear possible as they were hunted—because they are trying to trick him, trying to trap him, and yes, probably because they do love him. Maybe, even, because they are trying to love him in a way that he understands, because obviously they have not made as much progress as they would have liked to with him this past year. They have enjoyed toying with him, fighting him, testing him, and exhausting him as Batman—mentally, physically, emotionally—but they haven’t been able to corner him and draw him away from the world. They haven’t been able to convince him that he belonged in the dark with them. 

“We’ll make you understand, then.” Soft kisses. Gentle touches. Steady, shallow rocking. Bruce almost can’t stand it. It makes his eyes start to sting. 

“Are you so sure that you can?” His voice is steady but weak, not exactly the challenge that he wanted to lay.

They’re laughing again, but the sound of it isn’t as grating as it could be; they’re holding themselves back.

They’re holding themselves back because they want to make him cry and beg and admit that they’ve proven themselves. They’re holding themselves back because they love him.

Fuck, he feels warm. Pleasantly burning everywhere that they’ve touched him.

“Haven’t you seen by now that we can do anything, Bruce?” Jeremiah’s fingers graze over his lips, sliding inward to press against his closed teeth. He’s picking up speed again, and Bruce’s heart skitters behind his ribs at the slick drag of skin against skin. He can’t stop moving, shifting and squirming, chasing after the pleasure being given to him. “We’ll show you how much we love you, sweetheart.”

“We’ll prove it to you, just like we’ll prove everything else.” Jerome guides Bruce’s head to the side and kisses him again.

Jeremiah takes hold of his other hand.

It does feel like love, it does, it does. Bruce shudders and holds them, squeezing his eyes shut as Jeremiah rolls his hips. His back arcs once, then again. His heels dig into the mattress for stability as Jeremiah rides him, as Jerome kisses him, as they hold him and adore him. It’s too much, this gentle lovemaking. It wasn’t what he’d prepared himself for. 

A plea catches in his throat but he manages to hold it back, mortified that he’d even think to ask of anything more from them, and he squeezes their hands even harder. It’s probably hurting them, his blunt human nails digging into their skin, but they don’t break away to bite him and scratch him and tear into him.

His breath catches, again, again. He’s close, lurching underneath Jeremiah’s steady movements like he’s lost control of everything but his ability to hold onto them. The kiss breaks.

“It’s okay, Bruce,” Jerome tells him, hushed. “We’re going to take care of you. Softly, at first.” A hand reaches down, petting along Bruce’s lower abdomen, fingers grazing through the trail of hair that leads down to base of his cock. All of the muscles in his body start to clench. “Do you like it, when we do it softly?”

Yes.

No.

Yes.

He nods, eyes still clamped shut. Jerome presses a kiss to his hair. Jeremiah presses a kiss to his cheek. They hold him, and he fits between them, and he feels like he belongs, and it makes him ache because he wishes that he didn’t like it. He wishes that they were using him selfishly, that it was even more violent and awful than any of their confrontations, that this was another thing that he could hate them for. He wishes that it didn’t feel like love. Honestly, these two were such utter bastards—talking about eating bits and pieces of him and prying open his chest but then being like this just to mess with his head even more. His nails dig even deeper into the flesh of their hands, surely cutting into it by now, and still, they do not retaliate in kind.

“Open your eyes for me, precious thing.”

He does.

His vision is blurry; he refuses to think about the reason behind it.

“We love you, Bruce.”

He shuts his eyes and begins to shake. The heat inside of him blooms and spreads, washing over his entire body in wave after wave. Jeremiah continues to move above him; too good, too much, too tender. He feels emotionally raw and physically sensitive, which is likely what they wanted all along. They knew him too well, and he knew them too well to think otherwise.

When they kiss his cheeks he knows that they are basking in the saline taste of the tears that had managed to slip past his clenched eyelids. His damp eyelashes part, and he is only slightly mollified to see that they are not grinning down at him as if they’ve won some kind of game.

“You did that on purpose,” he mumbles, and his hands finally begin to unclench. 

“You like it when we bite you softly.” Jerome sounds like the cat that caught the canary. Stars above, Bruce wishes he didn’t just mentally equate himself to a prey animal. “We just wanted to see if you like it when we do other things softly, too.”

“You do not bite me softly.”

“Do you recall that we can bite through bone, sweetheart?” Jeremiah’s smile twitches even wider as he moves, possibly because Bruce shivers, over-sensitive, when his softening cock slips out of Jeremiah. Jeremiah is still hard, the head of his cock dark and dripping. Bruce bites his own tongue to stop the noise that builds up inside of him at the sight of it. “We bite you softly. And you like it.”

Bruce looks down at their joined hands.

There’s dark blood under his nails and smeared against the tips of his fingers. He stares at it for a moment, wondering what their blood would taste like if he brought his hand up to his mouth.

“Now that you’ve finally started to relax we can have a little more fun with you.” Jerome presses closer and the shadows in the corners of the room flicker and darken, like they are living extensions of him, reflexively snuffing out the light. “We’ll rough you up a little, darlin’, because you like that too, don’t you?”

“Do what you want, as long as it doesn’t involve talking about eating me again.”

Jerome’s expression morphs into an exaggerated pout. “But you like being eaten by us.” Then, as if he suspects Bruce has no clue as to what he might be talking about, his tongue rolls out of his mouth and pointedly laps at nothingness in front of Bruce’s face.

A short burst of air rushes out of Bruce’s mouth—not a laugh, not quite, but close enough to it that Jerome grins sharply at him—and he rolls his eyes.

“You know what I mean.”

He does feel relaxed. His guard is down. If they’d continued on as roughly as they’d started he probably wouldn’t be struggling to distance himself from them—emotionally, since physically wasn’t exactly an option right now—but they break down his barriers so easily. Maybe anyone could, if he ever allowed them close enough for long enough to be gentle and loving with him. Though even before he’d come back, even while Jerome and Jeremiah slept, he had never been so open with any person who he’d had fleeting dalliances with. His life choices didn’t exactly leave the sort of foundation that lasting relationships could be built upon, and he’d known that even before he left Gotham behind. He simply couldn’t afford to get close to people.

Most people.

_People._

How sad is it that the ones who he allows nearest to him had definitely considered hunting and consuming him when he was younger? Very, he guesses. Very sad.

Before he can slip further into a train of morose thoughts Jerome moves; he throws a leg over Bruce’s upper body and crouches over him, hands tightly grabbing onto Bruce’s hips and lifting them away from the bed. Bruce’s legs kick outwards, reflexive, as his body curls, and he hisses out a curse when Jerome roughly drags his tongue against sensitive skin before going farther, licking wetly along Bruce’s cleft in the same way that Jeremiah’s fingers had dragged against it, with obvious intent.

He squeezes Jeremiah’s fingers and can feel Jeremiah press a kiss along the back of his hand. He can hardly see him, with Jerome’s thighs obstructing his view on both sides, and if he looks straight forward—

He abruptly remembers the feeling of Jeremiah in his mouth, on his tongue; bigger and hotter and better than fingers. He feels jittery and hot, unsure if something is expected of him, and then Jerome’s tongue circles around the rim of muscles and his legs jerk again, knees swinging up and crashing against Jerome’s body, not that he seems to mind overly much. He hums and begins to delve inside, and Bruce bites his lip and attempts to give himself a moment to adjust.

Jeremiah is shifting beside them, though he keeps hold of Bruce’s hand. He seems to be crawling upwards to curl around Bruce. Bruce can feel breath ruffle his hair before a kiss is pressed to the crown of his head. It reminds him of last time, and the way that Jerome and Jeremiah easily moved in and out of each other's spaces; the way that it had made it seem as if they did this—take a lover together, fit a stranger into the hollow space between them to be enjoyed and then forgotten—more often than not. But really they were so aware of each other’s presence from years and years of hunting together, and years and years of having no one but each other as company deserving of any kind of ongoing attention. 

Jerome shallowly flicks his tongue in and out of him, teasing him and getting him almost excessively wet as drool drips from his mouth and onto the crease of Bruce’s ass. Jeremiah guides his hand down, and he curls Bruce’s fingers around hard flesh. Desire sparks under Bruce’s skin—his own, though theirs echoes back at him; feeding off of his, amplifying his—even if there’s no way that his body is going to recover from his first orgasm any time soon. He draws his fingers up the length of Jeremiah’s cock, pressing his thumb against the weeping slit, and he can feel Jeremiah start to pant into his hair. He looks directly in front of him and inhales shakily through his nose; wanting, wanting, wanting—

They want, he wants. It makes them want more, it makes him want more. Like they’re stuck in some kind of positive feedback loop. Desire only brings forth more desire, and soon everything else will be buried underneath it. 

Jerome’s tongue slides inside of him and Bruce’s fingers clench as he jerks. Jeremiah huffs and starts to hump into the tight circle of his fist. Jerome chuckles as his hands slide from Bruce’s hips to cradle his ass, clawed fingertips pricking into skin. 

Bruce’s mouth falls open, breathing shallow breaths. He brings his legs up higher and crosses them before settling his calves behind Jerome’s head and neck; pressing him further down, pressing him further in. He can hear Jerome chuckle deeply. He can feel Jeremiah laying more kisses against the top of his head. Everything other than them fizzles out of his mind; Batman and villains and his city and the world. 

The shadows of the room grow darker.

His tongue slips out from between his teeth and he lifts his head just enough to drag it against the shaft of Jerome’s dick. Jerome’s slurping briefly pauses as he bears down, pressing and rubbing against the flat of Bruce’s tongue. Bruce’s mouth drops wider open, his legs lock tighter around Jerome’s head, his hand drags up and down Jeremiah’s cock. He reaches with his free hand, up above his head, to pet into Jeremiah’s hair. He cranes his neck back, their eyes barely managing to catch, and then his hand retreats to skim up the inside of Jerome’s thigh, up, up, to grab at the base of him.

“Jeremiah.” He’s burning up, fuck, his memories hadn’t been enough to get him ready for this; or maybe the alcohol that had been buzzing in his system back then had dulled everything down. Jeremiah reaches out to lay one hand on Bruce’s chest, over his wildly beating heart, the other he drags into Bruce’s hair, keeping it out of his face, keeping their eyes locked. He’s thrusting into Bruce’s hand, hard and fast, the wet sound of it muffled by the wetter sounds of Jerome’s mouth. Bruce’s tongue darts out again, flicking between his fingers to drag against Jerome. He works his hand over Jeremiah faster. Jerome’s tongue slides out of him, two fingers taking its place, so that he can bite at the insides of Bruce’s thighs. “Jerome.”

“It’s so wonderful to hear you say our names, Bruce. Say them again.”

“Say them for us.”

His breath catches. For a moment his mouth begins to form the language that is not human; the names spoken to him as he was sleeping. A garbled few syllables scratches their way out of his throat and over his curling tongue. Jeremiah’s eyes, still locked with his, shimmer uncannily. At the back of his throat he can taste blood. There is a high whine in his ears. He remembers that he cannot repeat the things they’ve spoken to him. 

“Jeremiah,” he rasps, and he can feel wet heat drench his hand as Jeremiah’s nails dig into him. His eyes clench shut. “Jerome.”

“You were able to say more than you could last time.” Jerome kisses the skin that he’d bitten, then drags his tongue against it in a slow sweep. “Do you still taste blood, darlin’?”

“Yes.”

“It’s sweet,” he purrs, “isn’t it?”

It’s really not. 

He wonders, though, if their blood is sweet. He’s made them bleed but he’s never dared to bring any stray droplets close to his mouth; always thinking in the back of his mind that even if they didn’t see it they would know, somehow, that he’d done it. That he’d lapped at their blood the way that they have so often lapped at his. To them it would be something like romance, something like desire, something like a surrender. 

But it didn’t have to be a surrender. 

It could be a reciprocation. 

Bruce inhales heavily. Jerome and Jeremiah have scratched and bitten him as if it’s second nature, as if they were so used to tearing into humans that it was at one point the only way that they knew how to touch one. Even when they started figuring out other ways to connect and converge with him, the stinging caress of their claws and teeth hadn’t gone away. They held themselves back from doing anything that would outright kill him, but they hadn’t ever stopped.

Perhaps that, too, was in their nature. Whatever it was that they were didn’t approach love as something tender to be nurtured, but as a fight to be won.

Maybe it was strange for them to feel love at all. Maybe that was unnatural. Maybe their connection with Bruce had done something to them; changed them, made them bizarre within the context of their own existence, made them feel things that they should not have felt for anyone, least of all a human. 

Jeremiah is murmuring something softly against the crown of his head. Jerome is enthusiastically sinking his fingers and tongue further inside of him to open him up, to make it easier for him, to make sure that he enjoys it. These acts of fond intimacy are just as unnatural for them as their connection to someone who should by all accounts be regarded as prey. 

Something about that idea—they are not the same as they would have been without him, just as Bruce is not the same as he would have been without them—makes him feel an odd endearment towards them which he cannot seem to smother.

It feels like the most natural thing in the world, then, to turn his head towards Jerome’s thigh and sink his teeth into it. 

Jeremiah’s whispers stop. Between his legs Jerome freezes.

Bruce shuts his eyes and bites harder, until blood begins to coat his teeth.

It is not sweet, or coppery, or anything that he might have thought it would be like—rotten candy apples, smoke and ash, the taste of death; wretched and disgusting and alien.

It is bitter.

He draws away, tongue grazing against the backs of his teeth where the dark blood had begun to seep through, and there is a buzzing awareness in his head. There is a stillness before a storm, a moment of silence before the rumble of thunder. He can feel it, the sensation of something beginning to build.

He can sense it, because that is what they are feeling, and when they feel something deeply enough it can seep through into him—like blood through the spaces of his teeth. An impatient yearning buzzes under his skin; his own or theirs, he can’t be totally sure right now. 

When Jerome moves it is within the span of a few frantic blinks. The shadows of the room flicker. There are more than one set of hands grabbing him, more than two, even, but Jerome’s sudden movements combined with the light coming and going like a candle about to sputter out leave Bruce unable to see to make sure of a theory that he’s already had suspicions about. 

He is braced on his hands and knees, Jeremiah’s face in front of him. Cool fingers touch his lips and bright eyes are riveted there, as if struck by the sight of Bruce with blood smeared around his mouth.

“Did you like it?” Jeremiah asks, sounding breathless.

He’s not sure. He hadn’t been revolted by it, but he wasn’t exactly eager to lap the blood right from Jerome’s broken skin. 

He can’t answer anyway, because without any warning Jerome sinks his teeth deeply into him—into his ass cheek, of all fucking things—and Bruce has to muffle a startled scream. He rears back and twists, kicking out and landing a hit on Jerome’s chest, not that that seems to dissuade him from encroaching on Bruce’s space immediately afterwards, stretching out on top of him and grinding against his hip. 

“You fucker.” God, it stings. Usually when they bit him they didn’t have so much muscle to sink into. “That had better not need stitches.”

Jerome seems content to ignore his flaring temper, rutting against his hip and reaching out smear the blood across Bruce’s mouth even more. His finger slides over Bruce’s lips once, twice, mimicking a frown, and then Bruce opens his mouth and snatches the finger between his teeth, not biting hard enough to draw blood this time, just enough to make Jerome pause. 

“Look at you, precious little predator,” Jerome coos, eyes flashing wildly. “Biting your way up to the top of the food chain.” His finger, coated in his own blood, flexes against Bruce’s tongue. “You look so gorgeous with my blood on your mouth.” He leans down, until their foreheads are almost pressing together. Bruce’s teeth loosen around his finger and he slides it out slowly, sharp tip dragging against Bruce’s tongue. “You look as dangerous as you are.”

He kisses Bruce, then, though Bruce tries to recoil because he knows exactly where Jerome’s mouth has been. Bruce’s blood and Jerome’s blood seep further into him with every swipe of Jerome’s tongue, coppery and bitter. Hands pin his shoulders down, and yet another set pins his hips. One of Jeremiah’s hand runs tenderly through his hair as the other reaches down to cradle Bruce’s chin with his palm, fingers digging in toward the hinge of his jaw to keep his mouth open, as if he suspects that Bruce might bite again.

Bruce detests them.

Bruce doesn’t only detest them.

He reaches up, digging both hands into Jerome’s hair. He kisses back as best as he can with Jeremiah keeping him open, dragging his tongue along Jerome’s and trying to ignore the saliva dribbling down the corners of his mouth. The hands on his hips grip tighter. Jerome thrusts against him, the firm muscle of his thigh pressing hard against Bruce’s dick. Something hot and electric runs up his spine and his legs jerk.

Jerome retreats, leisurely dragging his tongue along the roof of Bruce’s mouth, and as he props himself up Bruce sees the barest hint of those extra limbs that he’s sure he can feel before Jeremiah ducks over him, taking Bruce’s tongue into his mouth and sucking, as if he’s chasing the lingering taste of Bruce’s blood leftover from Jerome. 

Jerome comes, the wet heat of him splattering against Bruce’s hip and stomach, and Jeremiah’s grip on his jaw loosens, allowing them to revert back to somewhat normal kisses, if such bloody kisses could be considered normal at all. 

Bruce tries not to think too hard about that. Or about the fluttering of his heart. Or about the calm feeling overtaking him. It’s nothing. It means nothing.

If he tells himself that enough, maybe he’ll believe it. 

The kiss breaks.

“Bruce,” they say together, looking down at him with glimmering eyes and drooling mouths. They’ve had a chance to whet their appetite, to remember what it was like to touch him and be touched by him in ways that could bring pleasure as well as pain. They’re going to be hungrier than ever, now, Bruce knows this. He just does.

It’s that stupid connection, again. Always that damn link between them. Sometimes Bruce wonders if it came into existence when they’d first kissed, or when they’d first fucked.

Other times, quietly and anxiously, he wonders if it had begun to form back when he took a cold hand between his own and futilely attempted to bring heat into it.

He’s not sure which option he’d rather be the truth.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It may not be October anymore but the horror elements live on. 
> 
> **Specific warning for this chapter:**  
>  Could not think of what to tag this as, because technically speaking it's not cannibalism when they're not the same species, but this chapter does contain what I shall refer to as 'the nonconsensual consumption of flesh.'  
> And you may look at that and say, "Neyiea, I am not actually surprised by this" but it might not be what you're thinking. **I'll put a note at the end just in case so if anyone's really iffy about whether they want to be surprised you can skip down there.**

Jeremiah’s fingers dig into his hair, pressing Bruce’s face right into the crook of his neck.

“Come on,” he urges lowly, tilting his head in further invitation. “It’s not fair, otherwise. Don’t you like playing fair?”

Bruce almost feels like rolling his eyes, but neither Jerome nor Jeremiah would see it, nor would they particularly care, so really it is easier to do that which had felt so right to him not so long ago and sink his teeth into flesh again. Jeremiah goes tense and shudders. Jerome’s hands creep up Bruce’s back and splay out over his shoulders. The bitter taste of dark blood floods into his mouth a second time. He’s not revolted by it, but he’s not excited by it. 

They’re excited by it, however, and they’re also completely unsubtle about it. Though, to be fair, they are hardly ever subtle about anything when he is involved. Jerome presses his weight against Bruce’s back, holding him tight between their bodies. Jeremiah’s hand cradles the back of his head firmly, evidently not interested in allowing Bruce to retreat until enough blood has been shed to appease him. When Bruce is finally able to draw away, rivulets of near-black dripping down his chin and neck, he spares a thought as to whether spilling their blood was always in the cards for tonight—another way to smother him in their scent, another way to mark him as theirs even more than they already had—or if he’d taken things a step further than even they had planned. 

It’s nice to be the one that surprises them, every once in a while. Too often they are the ones surprising him. 

The tenderness that they had worn him down with is burning off, now. Their nails scratch and hook into him more often, their teeth scrape and bite down hard enough to split skin, they don’t downplay their strength or speed, or the way that Bruce can sometimes feel far more hands than there ought to be between the two of them. They are almost, in their own particular way, easing Bruce into the reality of what their true selves are. They are unthinkingly open. They have no faltering hesitance or shame, because they have spent their entire lives thinking of themselves as something _more_ and _better_ than any other living creature on the planet. 

He thinks of multiple pinpoint flashes of their acid-green eyes from a distance, the web that he’d been caught up in during a half-forgotten dream, primordial fears, monsters in the dark, the ever-growing shadows in his peripherals. 

He wonders how they appear to each other when they are alone. He wonders if they are even more terrifying then than in the moments where their jaws begin to unhinge. 

Jerome’s fingers slide inside of him; four, now, with an ease that makes his cheeks feel hot. He is not quite recovered from Jeremiah’s earlier attention, but his blood is starting to pool again, low and hot in his belly. It won’t be much longer, now.

They huff against him, inhaling heavily through their noses, they lick blood and sweat from his skin. One of Jeremiah’s hands slides up the inside of his thigh, fingers grazing against him where he’s stretched open. Jeremiah’s eyes are burning, and Bruce really shouldn’t be overly surprised that his touch becomes more intent, as if seeking a way to force one of his own fingers inside. Jerome murmurs something that sounds amused, and his hand begins to withdraw.

Bruce’s breath catches at the drag, at the absolutely conspicuous sensation of an additional finger sinking inward as everything else retreats. He doesn’t curse their lack of patience or their tendency to push him to his limit, but they must see something in his expression that makes Jerome fondly nuzzle against him and Jeremiah lean down to run his tongue against Bruce’s cock before everything drives back inside.

Five, he thinks hotly, blood turning molten. It isn’t nearly as uncomfortable as he thinks it should be, but then, he’s been opened up in a similar way to this before. Jeremiah’s cock inside of him, Jerome’s finger thrusting in along with it as if to get him ready for even more. As if to get him ready for the both of them. 

Bruce’s fingers dig into hair, dig into flesh, dig and dig until anyone else would attempt to pull away instead of pushing closer. 

“Are we proving it, Bruce?” Jerome’s pupils have practically swallowed up his iris. “Or do you need more convincing?” 

If there were ever a better time to give in to greed, Bruce does not know of it, and he does not know of any who would be so eager to indulge his questionable vices. His hand shifts to grip Jerome’s chin tightly. Jerome is looking at him as if Bruce is the otherworldly one, and maybe—

—maybe there is something about him that is not as it should be. Isn’t that what makes the most sense? Maybe he was—

Bruce jolts, the thought flickering to nothingness, when a cool tongue drags against the side of his face.

_Are we proving it, Bruce?_

“You’re proving it.” Didn’t they always? Not only that, didn’t they always make him admit it? If they were less vain he might think that they actually needed to hear his assurances, instead of just wanting to revel in his concessions. “But I want more, anyway.”

Jerome’s chest rumbles, a beastly purr. Jeremiah lays a path of biting kisses across the curve of his shoulder. Bruce is glad that they’re not laughing, that they’re not rubbing his desires in his face and telling him outright that they could have had this all year, if only he could stop bothering to care about other people and only focus on them. They know him well enough that they realize when they can tease him about these matters and when they really shouldn’t.

“Do you remember,” he begins, as if he is the one unable to stop reminiscing, now. “The first time that we danced?” The only time, really, that they’d ever danced in the literal sense, and not as the euphemism for fighting that they were so fond of making. Bruce feels warm, dreamy, soft around the edges. He routinely spends his nights throwing himself into danger, but here, between them, there was nothing that could get to him. They wouldn’t allow it. It’s not exactly safety, because he’d be a fool to think that they were safe, but it’s close enough. “Being with you two—it always feels like that first dance.” 

New and alarming, a sudden trespass into his personal space. More attention being lavished upon him than Bruce knew what to do with. 

“What a sweet sentiment.” Jeremiah’s hand draws away, and he rubs his palm against Bruce’s firming cock. “You know we almost didn’t let you go, after that dance.”

_Then stay with us._

_You won’t regret it._

“I know.”

They love him in their own way, but it is selfish and possessive. They love him in their own way, but not in a way that he could ever completely reciprocate. Despite all that, still, they do love him. 

They shift and twist, Jerome’s fingers drag as they slip out of him. They murmur things under their breath as they push and pull and cut into him, the sound of their voices becoming more frenzied. Bruce’s mind buzzes and his heart pounds, and soon he is guided by a firm hand on the small of his back. He kneels astride Jerome’s lap, with Jeremiah pressing up behind him to once again dig his teeth into Bruce’s already bleeding neck. It would be so easy, so easy, for one of them to rip his throat out—

Jerome’s knuckles drag up and down his spine. Jerome’s cock drags against the slick cleft of his ass. Jeremiah’s hand grazes against the back of his neck before sliding down, firm enough that Bruce is sure his skin is welting, and then he grabs onto Jerome’s cock, nudging the head against Bruce’s hole. Bruce’s hands reach out, gripping firmly onto Jerome’s shoulders as Jeremiah presses a kiss to the skin behind his ear. 

“You want more,” Jeremiah starts.

“So take it,” Jerome finishes.

Bruce shuts his eyes and begins to sink down, inch by inch, until he’s settled completely in Jerome’s lap. They rub his back, as if to soothe him, even though there’s no discomfort after they’d been so attentive in their preparations. Bruce opens his eyes and stares hard at Jerome’s mouth, breathing heavily and wondering if he could bear to look either one of them in the eyes right now. He rocks, the slightest movement, and shivers at the drag and pull and the way that he can feel so much. Jerome’s hands drag over his ribs, up his chest, settle against the sides of his face. He presses a kiss to Bruce’s forehead, almost laughably chaste considering everything else that they’ve done together. 

Jeremiah, meanwhile, slides one hand in between Bruce and Jerome to pet against Bruce’s cock while the other once again grazes against Bruce’s slick, stretched rim. A finger starts to press in alongside Jerome and Bruce can’t hold back the high, needy whine that builds up in his throat no matter how embarrassing it is. 

“We’re not going too fast for you, are we, sweetheart?” Jeremiah asks, thrusting further inside and kissing the sweaty nape of Bruce’s neck. Bruce rises up slightly on his knees to give himself a break, entire body going tense. He wavers, shaking his head because his tongue feels weighed down, and his mouth falls open in a pant when Jeremiah pulls away just slightly, but only so that he can slide a second fingertip in with the first. Bruce burns, unable to relax. It’s bordering on too much. He’s so full. He can’t take any more.

“You can take it, darlin’,” Jerome urges, as if able to read Bruce’s thoughts. “You can take everything we give you.” Jerome’s thumbs rub comforting circles against his cheeks. “We know you can.”

“Easy for you to say,” Bruce eventually manages, he can’t seem to stay still, shifting forward and backward. He doesn’t lower himself down the entire way again but there’s no doubt as to what he’s doing—shallowly fucking himself onto Jerome’s cock and Jeremiah’s fingers. “You don’t—you don’t even have an idea of what this feels like.”

“I’ll let you fuck me next time, then.”

Bruce’s gaze, which has managed to stay focused on Jerome’s heavily scarred mouth, snaps up to meet his eyes. The corners of them crinkle as Jerome smiles, and Bruce tries not to think too hard about the fact that he’s somewhat charmed by the sight of it. 

“It’s not fair,” Jerome coos, “if you only ever come inside of one of us, is it?”

Bruce’s nails dig into the meat of his shoulders and Jerome’s eyes briefly flutter shut, then open again just a fraction to look up at Bruce from under a fan of red lashes. 

“You’re so warm, Bruce.” His voice is growing rough. “You’re so warm everywhere. Bet you’d feel so good inside of me.”

Bruce bites his lip, rocking down a little lower. The hand on his cock moves to splay against his chest, and Jeremiah’s tongue slathers against the back of his neck before dragging all the way down—

“Fuck.” Bruce jolts, almost lifting himself completely off of Jerome’s dick, when he feels Jeremiah slowly lap around the point where they’re all connected. “That’s—that’s—” Gross, disgusting, reprehensible. So, so fucking hot. “You two—you have zero boundaries, don’t you?”

Jeremiah’s tongue briefly retreats back into his mouth. “Does that surprise you?” He presses a kiss to stinging skin, to the _fucking bite mark_ that Jerome had left on Bruce’s ass. It shouldn’t surprise him, but that still doesn’t make the sensation of the pointed tip of Jeremiah’s tongue trying to press inside—alongside his own fingers, alongside his brother’s dick—any less alarming.

“Oh god,” slips out of his mouth as he feels himself being stretched further open. Jeremiah’s fingers pull back just enough for his tongue to glide partway in, and then thrust back inside. “Oh god.”

“Gods,” Jerome hisses, eyes locked on Bruce’s flushing face. “Oh _gods_.”

“You’re not—you’re not gods.” Fuck, fuck, fuck. Jeremiah is pressing deeper inside of him, tongue extending past his fingers, sliding right against Jerome’s cock. Bruce should probably be repulsed by it instead of turned on, but this is just another one of the many ways that he’s been wired wrong. 

“Close enough.” Jerome’s fingers are digging into the skin of his back. Bruce can feel blood start to drip down the swell of his ass, probably catching on Jeremiah’s tongue and smearing against his mouth. “On this planet.”

On this planet. Bruce’s mind whirs. Close enough, on this planet. On this planet. 

He’s moving faster in Jerome’s lap, bouncing up and down on his knees, the movements still shallow but only because if he seats himself fully on Jerome’s cock when he’s already so full he thinks he might actually tear something. Jeremiah’s two fingers are all the way inside of him, and his tongue is bending and curling, constantly in motion. Bruce is so, so full and feels so, so good.

Heat pools inside of him and his toes start to curl. He realizes, with a sudden clarity, that he’s—

“Gonna come, gonna come—”

Jerome lifts him off of his lap, Jeremiah’s tongue and fingers slip out of him, someone’s hand—Bruce doesn’t know and doesn’t care whose—grabs tightly at the base of his cock as he wails, trying to rock down, trying to chase the feeling that had been building up inside of him.

“Fuck, _gods_. Fuck you both.” Arms curl around him tightly, keeping him still. A frustrated sound, something like a snarl, wrenches out from deep in Bruce’s chest. They both press kisses all over him, and Bruce’s breathing and heartbeat eventually start to even out. “I was so close, you assholes.” It would have been so good, he would have been so slack afterwards. But now all that coiling tension inside of him has been stifled instead of released, and he feels irritated enough that he’d rip into them if he didn’t know how much they liked it. “You could have kept going after, I wouldn’t have cared, why’d you stop?”

“You might not have cared, but we would have.”

“We don’t want to fuck you into oblivion. We want you to be conscious enough to react when—” The hand around the base of his cock grips tighter. “—we’re both inside of you for the first time.”

“Greedy bastards,” he mutters. They hum, not sounding bothered by the accusation. But of course, why would they be? 

“But we’re _your_ greedy bastards,” Jeremiah says after a moment, and Bruce feels hot all over again. 

He hadn’t really thought—hadn’t ever contemplated—that the possessive feelings that Jerome and Jeremiah felt might go both ways. That as much as they said that he was theirs, that they also felt as if they were his. It probably shouldn’t placate him as much as it does. It probably should just worry him more, but—

The sentiment verges on being sweet, and if anything it just makes Bruce feel like he belongs even more. 

“I suppose you are,” he says, weighing the words on his tongue cautiously, as if he could taste deceit if they proved to be untrue. Batman and Joker. Bruce and his monsters. He certainly felt responsible enough for the atrocities that they planned that every time one of their schemes or hunts succeeded he took the failure personally. Only he could stop them. They were his problem to deal with. They were his.

They sigh and surge against him. 

You’re mine, he thinks to himself.

And somehow it feels like the truth.

They lick into his mouth and scratch lines down his ribs and suck bruises onto the skin of his chest. They tumble down, bringing him with them, and Jeremiah shifts to lay flat on his back, gripping onto Bruce’s hands and pulling. Interlocking their fingers as Bruce seats himself on Jeremiah’s cock. Holding him tightly when Bruce starts to squirm because Jerome is pushing three fingers into him without making Bruce feel like he’s going to split open. The wet glide of everything makes his cock twitch and his nipples go hard. The way Jerome’s tongue drags down the length of his spine, just like Jeremiah’s had before it had pressed inside of him, makes him lurch in sudden expectation. 

“You’re almost ready, aren’t you?” Jerome presses a kiss to his tailbone. “We’re so close, darlin’, it won’t be much longer now.” His tongue traces wet semi-circles around the edge of muscle and Bruce holds his breath as, little by little, the tip of his tongue begins to work its way inside.

Bruce buries his face in the crook of Jeremiah’s neck, smudging the dried blood left over from when Bruce had bitten into him, and rolls his hips. It aches, just a little, but he’s been hurt far, far worse by them and enjoyed it. His skin is tingling. His face is burning. Jeremiah presses a kiss into his hair.

Jerome’s tongue and fingers retreat, and in a matter of seconds Jerome is hovering behind him, cock dragging against the curve of his ass. There are hands on his hips, hands on his thighs, hands holding his.

And yet there is still another hand able to hook under his chin to lift his gaze to meet Jeremiah’s.

“Try to stay relaxed, sweetheart,” Jeremiah croons as the head of Jerome’s dick nudges against them. The hands on his hips urge him a few inches up on Jeremiah’s cock. Thumbs sink into the muscle of his ass and push his cheeks apart.

Jerome begins to slide inside of him. Jeremiah doesn’t look away from Bruce’s face.

“We love you so much, Bruce.”

The hands on his hips guide him back down, taking Jeremiah to the root. Behind him Jerome stops, retreats slightly, advances a little further. 

“We’ll love you forever.”

“It’ll be easier for you, once you accept it.” 

Bruce trembles; eyes focusing, unfocusing, focusing, unfocusing. A hand pets against the side of his face. They must be speaking more, because the high whine that always accompanies their mother-tongue starts droning in his head. Hands rub up his back, into his hair, at his temples, alleviating the ache that threatens to pulse inside of his head.

And then Jerome’s hips are flush against his ass, and everything comes back into focus again.

He opens his mouth—in an astonished curse or in exaltation, his buzzing mind is too jumbled for him to be sure—but all that comes out at first is a wordless breath. Jeremiah is looking up at him as if Bruce is the one who could claim to be a god on this planet. “Jeremiah.” He shifts and jerks, already strung out from the knowledge that they’re both inside of him. “Jerome.”

“We’ve got you, Bruce.” Jerome turns Bruce’s head to lay a kiss upon his cheek. “We’ve got you.” 

Jerome moves first, shallow rocking that has already left Bruce a shuddering mess even before Jeremiah begins to roll his hips upwards. They hold him and kiss him and fuck him. They bite him and scratch him and worship him. Hands settle heavily on the small of his back and Jeremiah thrusts hard, nipping dedicatedly at Bruce’s open mouth. Jerome pulls almost all the way out, forehead pressed against the crook of Bruce’s neck as he drives back inside. It isn’t long until the two even out, until they find the same rhythm, until Bruce is caught swaying between them, heart hammering in his chest and hardly able to breathe. Embarrassing kittenish whines—he’s too old to make noises like these, he’s been too old for years—fall out of his mouth, and it seems to spur them on even more than his fear ever had.

The tension from before is building up again, quickly and violently. Bruce rocks against them, onto them, thoughts skittering wildly. Jeremiah kisses him; it feels desperate, out of control, it feels like an echo of what Bruce is feeling. And then Jerome is twisting him around again, wildly kissing at the corner of his mouth, and Bruce pulls one hand out of Jeremiah’s grip so that he can twist it into Jerome’s hair.

He’s murmuring something under his breath, but he can’t make it out. He feels dizzy, everything is spinning, the shadows are converging. He’s not scared, but maybe he should be. The taste of blood—his own—is flooding his mouth, is dripping down his chin, is smearing against Jerome’s lips and splattering onto Jeremiah’s neck and chest. 

The tension winding up inside of him snaps. He cries and thrashes in the shadows in the dark in the hollow space between two monsters who he can only see for the acidic glow of their caustic green eyes. Pleasure floods through him and leaves him raw and shivering and lurching as he feels everything around him go tighter, as if they mean to ensnare him, to sink into the dark with him, to take him underground and force him into slumber with them. A surge of liquid heat rushes into him and fills him and seeps out of him—so full, so full, so good—and Bruce bites his lip to keep from screaming before he begins to go limp, dim flickers of electricity running up and down his arcing spine as Jerome and Jeremiah’s movements begin to slow and settle. 

Bruce shuts his eyes and desperately tries to catch his breath. If he were capable of recollection Jerome’s previous mention of being fucked into oblivion would be echoing in his head. 

He feels as if he’s floating; like he’s far away, like he’s not even connected to his body anymore, because everything is too soft and good and gratifying for it to be contained in his corporeal form. He can hear them whisper to him, and he is dimly aware of the sound of movement, but he’s felt too much hedonistic pleasure and he’s still reeling from it, his body can’t process anything more. He’s felt too much in too short of a time span, and he needs to recover before he’s capable of feeling more. He lays in the shadows in the dark, breathing with an open mouth, contentment and an emotion almost like happiness warming him up from the inside.

And then he tastes something bitter.

The taste comes before the _sensation_. Before the _awareness_. Before he registers that there is a hand cupping his jaw and realizes that the familiar bitter flavour isn’t liquid.

There is something soft but solid in his mouth. 

His eyes snap open—the shadows have abated slightly, but he’s too distressed to take comfort in the return of light—and he means to throw himself upwards, to heave, to get it out, get it out, get whatever it is out, but they hold him down and lay their hands over his mouth in order to keep it shut.

Whatever is inside of him—there are two, he realizes now, two soft but solid pieces of something that must be their flesh, little chunks that they’d bitten off of themselves while Bruce was unaware—begins to slide against his tongue towards the back of his throat.

“It’s alright, Bruce, it’s alright.”

“We’re not one of your kind, and you’re not one of ours. It’s alright.”

His chest heaves, his stomach roils. Their flesh settles at the back of his throat and he fights against them harder.

“There’s no moral dilemma. We gave.” 

“We gave because we wanted to.”

Bruce can feel himself choking. If he breathes the air current will draw it further into him. A hand pets against his throat, as if to encourage him to swallow.

“Bruce, sweetheart, please.”

“Please, darlin’.”

He grits his teeth and clenches his eyes shut.

He breathes. 

He swallows. 

Everything is silent for a long moment; the twins seem to be holding their breath, as if uncertain for the first time in their long, long lives. Bruce breathes deeply, trying to fight down the sudden wave of nausea. As if he needed another reminder of the disconnect between them; as if he needed another reminder that their love wasn’t something he could understand; as if he needed another reminder that they were monsters. He glares up at them, ire igniting inside of his chest, contentment going up in smoke. 

Had this been what their earlier tenderness was for? He’d dropped his guard, and he should have known better, should have tried harder to keep it up, but the affection had split open his defenses in the same way that Jerome had talked about splitting open his chest, leaving his heart vulnerable to the attention and the attacks of those who were most likely to dream of consuming it whole.

They stare down at him with furrowed brows, as if not entirely sure why he looks upset. As if he should be pleased that they, who are so used to taking, had chosen to give. As if they thought that their desire to savour a piece of him would likewise be mirrored by him.

Their hands slowly draw away from his mouth. Bruce can see small, shallow gouges on their wrists.

“Never,” he starts, his voice the commanding, low timbre that he uses while in the cowl. “Never do that again.” He feels sick, he wants the night to be over, he wants them back asleep so that he can have five years free from them. “What the fuck prompted that? I’ve never spoken about eating you, don’t look at me as if you’re confused, you must have known that I wouldn’t like it.”

“It felt right,” Jeremiah says, voice soft. “It felt like something we should do.”

“Is this—” For their species, whatever they were, was love a fight to be won? Did the victor get the spoils? Did the victor snag their teeth into skin and bite, bite, bite until they’d torn off a mouthful? Is that why they had been so excited when he sunk his teeth into them hard enough to make them bleed? “—some kind of ritual for your kind?”

“We’re not sure,” Jerome answers slowly. “And there’s no one for us to ask.” 

Bruce turns onto his side, curling into himself. He is bleeding and sore and bruised and empty, empty, empty, except for dreadful sensation in his stomach. He thinks he might throw up. He probably should throw up. Get it out, get it out, get it out of him, even if it means he’s going to have to deal with it being forced back up into his mouth before it’s finally expelled. 

A hand settles upon his shoulder. Bruce curls up tighter, hands clenching into fists. 

“You’re upset.”

“We’re sorry.”

“Are you sorry that I’m upset or are you sorry that you did something to upset me, because those are two different things.”

Jeremiah settles behind him, and Jerome slumps in front of him. It’s like a metaphor for his life; Bruce just can’t ever seem to escape them. Even while he’d been on the other side of the world, when they were awake they were trying to call him back home, back to them.

Jerome grabs one of his hands and links their fingers together. A carefully studied and learned act of romance that feels more manipulative than sweet, now. 

“We’re sorry that we upset you,” Jerome offers stiltedly. They’ve probably never felt the need to apologize for anything in their lives. “We won’t do it again.”

“You’ve upset me a lot of times,” he can’t help but remind them. “You realize that, don’t you?”

They are silent. Bruce sighs.

It is another terrible thing about them which is in their nature. They have to hunt. They have to eat. They apparently think that allowing Bruce to consume small pieces of them is a grand romantic gesture fitting for the hazy moments post mind-blowing orgasm when really if they’d encapsulated him like this afterwards—an embrace that he could sink into—he would have been much happier. 

I’m not sure if I’ll ever understand you, he thinks sullenly. 

He probably shouldn’t want to understand them for any reason other than to stop them.

They lay around him, running hands through his hair, and up and down his back, over his arms and his chest—gentle, gentle, gentle in a way that Bruce could never believe was second-nature to them—trying to ease and soothe and settle. Bruce doesn’t understand the way that they love, and he is sure that they do not understand how humans love. They mimic, though, in an attempt to give him something that he can comprehend. They have watched humans for reasons other than figuring out how to make them experience the most fear possible as they were hunted. They have watched humans so that they have some idea of what to do with Bruce in order to showcase their affectionate feelings. 

He is tired. He aches. He feels unwell. He doesn’t speak to them, doesn’t look at them. He’s not sure if his refusal to acknowledge them is making them unsettled or not, because they still keep touching—gently, softly, _do you like it when we do it softly?_ —until Jeremiah settles his head into the crook of Bruce’s neck and Jerome presses his forehead to Bruce’s, and their hands stop trailing up and down.

There is a tension in the air, as if they mean to say his name, as if they are waiting for him to speak to them or look at them, as if they are barely holding back the urge to pry open his eyelids in order to make him acknowledge them. 

He’s never ignored them before, if anything they have always taken up too much of his attention since his return to Gotham and his remembrance of it all.

They wait. And they do not sink their teeth or claws into him. And they do not pry his eyes open. And they do not speak his name. They wait, and Bruce waits, too, until the waves of nausea have begun to subside and his wandering mind begins to think that if they all keep waiting they will eventually fall asleep, and Bruce will wake up to find two monsters hibernating around him with no idea what to do with them. 

He inhales deeply. Exhales a sigh. He opens his eyes and stares at Jerome’s unsmiling mouth. 

When the twins do speak their voices are barely above a whisper. 

“Can we take care of you like we did last time, sweetheart?”

“We’ll take care of everything, if you let us.”

Is that something that you actually want to do or is it something that you think you’re supposed to do, Bruce thinks. He doesn’t quite have the heart to ask, so he nods instead. 

Everything is hazy, as if veiled by a fog, even under the bright lights of his bathroom. The rush of hot water and the low sound of their voices. The touch of their hands and the way they guide him under the spray of the shower. The feeling of being watched intently is a vague sensation at the edges of his awareness. Like the last time, he is never not being touched. Like the last time, he is never left alone.

Like the last time, despite all that has happened in the many years since, he likes it. 

He’s tired. He wishes he were already sleeping. He’s not sure if he wants to go back to that bed and lay within sheets stained with so much blood that they are unsalvageable. The water stops. He’s guided out. He’s encased in multiple towels and dried off, gently, gently, as if they are afraid to chafe him even the slightest after tearing into him all night.

Bruce’s lips quirk upward despite himself, but only for a moment. 

They help him into the dressing gown hung up on the door and lead him out of the bathroom. He can’t even look at the bed, not right now, when he tells them he’ll sleep in the room across the hall instead. In the morning he’ll have to strip all the linens and throw them out before Alfred returns, and see if any blood had seeped into the mattress, but for now he’d rather ignore it. 

They cocoon him, they whisper things which sound affectionate to him, they pull blankets over top of him. They kiss his cheeks and hold his hands. His eyes flutter open to look up at them. 

There’s something oddly bittersweet about this moment, and despite everything he can’t find it within himself to withhold a farewell from them. 

“Jerome, Jeremiah, goodnight,” he bids, gripping back at their hands for a moment before he allows himself to go limp. He feels like he’s sinking, sinking, sinking. “Sweet dreams.”

There is a hand tenderly brushing his hair away from his forehead. There is a hand softly tracing along his jaw.

“Goodnight, Bruce.” There is a cool brush of lips against his brow.

“Sweet dreams.” There is a cool brush of lips against the corner of his mouth.

He sinks.

He’s gone.

x-x-x

They watch as Bruce falls into sleep, something unfamiliar and uncomfortable lurching inside of them. This had not ended the way that they wanted it to when Bruce approached them to make a deal; with promises and smiles and Bruce telling them that he would dream of them just as they would dream of him. 

“I wanted him to like it,” one says to the other. “It felt like something we were supposed to do.”

“Maybe he would have, if he were like us,” the other answers slowly. “But he’s not. He never will be. Not really.”

They are both silent for a long moment. The first leans down to brush hair out of Bruce’s face, dragging their claws through the ends of his curls in a way that has become a natural show of affection, even if Bruce could not remember the many times that it had happened as he was asleep, as he was now. 

“He spoke our names,” the first whispers, their hand drawing away. “He still bled, but he spoke them.”

The boy who remembered. The boy who was more and better than prey. The boy who grew into a man who could draw their blood and hurt them. Bruce was ever-changing, ever-evolving, ever-amusing, and ever-interesting. He is not entirely as he should be, with their dark influence tainting his frail humanity. 

He is not entirely as he should be, connected to them as intimately as he is. 

“Maybe the next time that he speaks them he will not bleed at all,” the second whispers back as they, too, drag their fingers through soft, familiar locks. 

They think of it. They think of him. How much he might change in the time that they’ll spend sleeping. How much he might stay the same. They want him with them, him between them, him, him, him. What they feel is eternal. Never-ending. Unchanging. Their attentions cannot drift the way that humans’ so often do. They want Bruce. They want him forever. They do not want to watch him whither and fade away. 

But he isn’t as other humans are.

He hasn’t been for a long time.

And indeed, perhaps he never had been.

They lean into him and whisper promises of what is to come. Batman and Joker; there is a ring to it that they like. They hope to play with him more when they wake up again. They haven’t had so much fun in ages. For too long their goals had only ever been to hunt and eat and sleep.

They had so much to look forward to, now. 

They whisper a final word of goodbye and then, like Bruce, they sink.

And they’re gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jerome and Jeremiah bite off pieces of themselves and put them in Bruce's mouth while he is unaware, then hold him down and cover his mouth so that he can't spit it out. 
> 
> Monster boyfriends! Being monsters! Causing some mood whiplash but they try to make up for it.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so this took me a while because real life getting _stressful_ up in here. Chapter count went up but only because I feel like trying to write a longer chapter right now is going to take me ages, so I'm splitting it.

He sleeps.

He doesn’t dream.

He wakes alone.

Bruce sits up, eyes squinting against the dim light making its way through the mostly-closed curtains. His body is a mishmash of slack muscles, aching bruises, and a deep-seated calm mixed with the lingering nausea related to remembering flesh sliding down his throat. Speaking of his throat; it feels raw, as if he’d been screaming in his sleep, but he can’t remember if he’d had a nightmare. 

He feels too peaceful to have had a nightmare. 

He gets out of bed and slowly prepares himself for the day, gets rid of the bloody sheets before Alfred has a chance to come home and catch sight of them, fixes himself a cup of tea in the hope that it will soothe his aching throat.

He presses his fingers against it lightly as he waits for the tea to steep. There had been a lingering taste, like bitter pennies, before he’d brushed his teeth and tongue. His blood. Their blood. Mixed together into something that neither excited him nor disgusted him. 

He wonders if they will dream of him.

He wonders if he will dream of them.

The quiet that had unsettled him continues on for several more nights, as if the other Gotham Rouges had also been wary of an upcoming show and had decided to put their own plans on hold because Joker, they had all found, was even more brutal when someone was attempting to steal his spotlight. Bruce has three nights of peaceful patrol and decent, dreamless sleep before he finally catches wind of something stirring in Gotham’s underbelly. 

Mobsters are, on the whole, easier to deal with than anyone who has ever been locked away inside of Arkham. He treats the situation with the same gravitas as he would any other, though he is admittedly glad to not be dealing with fear-toxin or riddles or poisonous plants. He follows a few of the higher-ranking Capos, keeping hidden in the shadows and listening closely for a clear indication of the mob’s current target, but an hour passes with very little useful information being spoken between them. 

Outside of the Capos’ foxhole the lamplight flickers, the bulbs about to die, and they both stop and stare out the small window, as if they are expecting something to be there, barely visible in the dark. 

The dying light, the encroaching darkness, the fear of the growing shadows; it makes his thoughts drift for a moment. But he can only spare a single moment for _them_ tonight. 

The Capos stop talking entirely. Bruce wonders if their thoughts, too, drifted to Joker for a moment. No one else knew that they were sleeping, after all. They only knew that Joker had been hidden away for more than three weeks, and nothing good ever happened when Joker reappeared after a period of radio-silence. 

The night carries on and Bruce continues his investigation elsewhere, unimpeded by any other crimes that demand his immediate attention. It serves as a hazy reminder that, though Gotham was never a truly peaceful city, things always escalated while the twins were awake, as if their active presence brought out the worst in people. When the sky begins to lighten at the horizon he finds himself looking to the west, towards the few faint stars still visible in the sky.

On this planet, echoes in his head. Close enough, on this planet.

He turns away from the fading stars and returns home for a few hours of sleep before going about his daily Bruce Wayne routine. 

Over the course of the next week he stops a burglary—and lets Selina go after she asks, with poorly concealed concern, if he’d been running himself ragged trying to find Joker before Joker made his presence public knowledge—and finds a greenhouse full of toxic plants that has nothing to do with Poison Ivy but seems like enough of a lure for her that he decides to check in once a week to make sure nothing _new_ is being cultivated, and stops a few petty crimes without anyone getting hurt, and even catches onto and disrupts the mobsters’ plot—importing drugs into the harbor, he should have guessed.

And sometimes the lamps will flicker, and all who notice it will abruptly pause; waiting, waiting for the echo of laugher in the dark. Waiting for a man in greasepaint and a vibrantly coloured suit to leap out from the shadows to terrorize them. Jerome and Jeremiah had left their mark, at least for now, and as Bruce patrols and lights dim and sputter like candles about to go out he begins to wonder if the dying lights are part of their influence, something to keep them in the memories of humans so that when they return to Gotham they can transition more easily into their role of Joker once again.

He doesn’t put much stock into the fact that the lights closest to him are the ones that tend to flicker. He doesn’t know enough, yet, to find it suspicious. 

Things come to a head not when he is in the cowl, but when he is out as Bruce Wayne. 

There is a charity event; of course. And a robbery; of course. And Bruce stumbling into someone as if drunk in order to push them out of the path of a bullet; of course. It’s only just a graze on his arm, really, and it hurts but he’s had much worse. Still, he decides to check on the wound as soon as he gets home and before Alfred has a chance to see it, just so that he can be sure Alfred won’t look too pained when he gazes upon Bruce’s newest scar in the making. 

But when he takes off his jacket and white shirt all that is left behind is a shallow scratch, not nearly deep enough to be responsible for the amount of blood that had seeped into the white fabric of his dress shirt and had dried against his skin.

He washes it thoroughly, as if he believes that his eyes are only playing tricks on him.

The lights in the bathroom begin to flicker.

He stares up towards the lights, then at his own reflection, and then stares beyond his shoulder as if he expects that one or more familiar figures will be behind him—they hadn’t gone to sleep, they’d stuck around to toy with him, the bullet and the blood were part of a waking nightmare that only Bruce would remember—but they do not appear, and the lights eventually return to normal, and the water in his sink in tinged pink with blood. 

And the cut appears even shallower than it had before, no longer even deep enough to bleed.

He gets rid of the shirt and jacket—just as he had gotten rid of bloody sheets two weeks ago—and fights to remain calm. He doesn’t know anything for certain, he doesn’t even know what they are or where they came from or how they exist. 

He knows they are not human even if they can appear so. He knows that they hunt and eat people. He knows that they enjoy the scent and flavour of fear. He knows that they hibernate in cyclic periods of approximately five years. He knows the sound of their names, and that hearing them speak hurts, and the colour and taste of their blood…

He knows, even if he does not like to think about it, that they love him.

But so much about them remains a secret. 

He doesn’t know what their blood—what their _flesh_ —might have done to him, or how permanent it might be. Perhaps traces of it—of _them_ —were still in his system, and that was the root cause of all of this. Eventually there would be nothing left of them, and Bruce would be back to his own personal level of normalcy, with no flickering lights or quickly healing wounds to mark him as being even more different than he already was. 

It nags at him, a mystery that needs solving as quickly as possible. He cannot afford any kind of attention that he himself has not orchestrated while he is out as Bruce Wayne, and a tendency to have the lights flickering around him—when he is becoming impatient, displeased, anxious; those are the links, that is when the dying of the light begins—is enough to cause suspicion, if not superstition. One lucky hit, and one concerned paramedic, and one wound that is already healing will gather more attention than any ornate act that he’s put on since returning to Gotham.

During the day he is Bruce Wayne. During the night he is Batman.

And when it is quiet, and crime can be controlled without the additional help of a masked vigilante, he resolves to be both as he explores that which he did not dare to while Jerome and Jeremiah were awake. There must be clues about them, down where they have made their home. Perhaps, if he searches hard enough, he will even find where they are sleeping. Perhaps he will find a wretched pile of bones, torn clothing, and discarded artifacts from the ‘prey’ that they’d dragged down into the dark with them.

Or perhaps he will find a place with stolen artifacts from his childhood and adolescence and his time spent as Batman; a place that was obviously meant for him; a poor attempt to acclimatize him to a life underground. 

He cannot be sure how deep down their tunnels go and cannot be sure how expansive they are; they’ve had hundreds of years to dig, hundreds of years to make an underground fortress. He could easily become lost, down there, even as they are sleeping and unaware of him intruding on their space. He could become lost, and never see the daylight again. He could set off a trap—Jeremiah and Jerome loved traps, and Jeremiah in particular seemed to have a fondness for incendiary devices—and become caved in.

He could die down there, if he wasn’t careful.

There is a full month of careful preparation involved. He researches and studies, and reaches out to multiple sources under a fake name for any insight that can be offered; one of whom is a prolific Cataphile—an urban explorer who spent their free time illegally descending into and exploring the Paris mines—who had at one point spent an entire week underground. Bruce learns all that he can and inwardly prays to anything that might be listening— _close enough, on this planet_ ; if a force like them existed in this universe to seemingly bring darkness and horror, then were they balanced out by something that could bring light and happiness?—that he will not ever be underground for a week. 

Food and water, in case his first of likely multiple trips ended up stretching over a few days. A first aid kit. A waterproof headlamp and helmet in place of the cowl—because if he needs to escape fast and manages to get up through a manhole he can’t have anything directly relating to Batman on his person in case of witnesses. Thermal blankets, a wetsuit with goggles and water-tight boots and gloves, and a set of spare clothes, because he knows he will encounter water, but he cannot be sure how high it will reach. Ropes and harnesses. Line markers that will point him back towards the exit. Communications equipment to contact Alfred in case of emergency. A waterproof bag for everything. 

It is over two months since they began to sleep that Bruce goes out early on a Saturday morning—telling Alfred he’ll be going away for some recon and not to worry—and slips into the sewer entrance closest to their tunnel while the sky is only just gaining colour, and after only a few minutes of walking, he is there. He drives a screw-hook into the brick surrounding the mouth of the tunnel to act as an anchor for his line and line-markers. When he is done, and his line is securely tied in a portion of the tunnel that is man-made, he allows himself to actually look directly at the entrance.

Bruce stares into the dark of a tunnel that he had previously not wanted to test fate by entering into of his own volition. The last time he had been here he had not been able to see but a few feet into the tunnel even with his cowl enhancing his vision, as if the shadows had substance; like they were a weighty entity that obscured all beyond it; a dark curtain that could not be crossed by any but those who knew how to step into a shadow in one place and step out in another place entirely. 

He cannot see very far now, either. It actually makes him feel a little better; to know that he hasn’t suddenly gotten night-vision on top of everything.

While he is awake he has learned how to quickly stop the flickering of the lights; he remains calm, breathes deeply, doesn’t allow his emotions to get the better of him. But while he is sleeping he has no such control, and sometimes he has nightmares. Terrible dreams where he is hunting and hungry and inhuman, awful sensations of bloodlust and an aching in his gums as if his teeth are extruding. He always wakes up feeling sick, remembering the sensation of raw flesh in his mouth and sliding down his throat. 

He turns on his headlamp and takes three quick steps inside.

The world does not shudder and tremble beneath his feet.

The entrance does not immediately close in behind him.

He braces himself. 

He descends. 

He discovers—over the course of sporadic weekend trips when he confident that he is able to spare the time, and which extend over the course of months without an end in sight—that underneath Gotham there is a veritable _maze_ of tunnels, with multiple points of entry from the sewer and also, on occasion, the subway system. Bruce explores, leaving line arrows in his wake to direct himself, and perhaps other poor souls who may someday find themselves hunted and trapped down here, towards exits.

Half a year of exploration passes. He leaves miles and miles of line and hundreds of line markers underground. He becomes more familiar with the dark, twisting underground pathways, sometimes able to remember particular turns and the characteristics of uneven paths without looking at the markers and spray-paint tags that he’s started to leave behind. 

He never stays down for more than two days at a time. 

The lights continue to flicker when his emotions get the better of him. At times his gums ache while he is awake and chasing down a criminal—his blood rushing and mind racing and everything around him seemingly becoming clearer from adrenalin, or something else entirely—and later when he skims his tongue over his teeth they feel sharper, but nothing like the utterly terrible knives of bone that extended and grew from Jerome and Jeremiah’s unhinged mouths. 

The nightmares stop; the fear of becoming completely like them waning with each passing month where he feels no urge to feast upon the raw flesh of a hunted, terrified human.

Anger towards them continues to come and go in waves.

He cannot know for certain if it was the act of consuming their blood and flesh that did this to him, although the circumstances make it seem the most likely culprit, or if it could be something else—lifelong close exposure, the tangible connection between them, the love that they felt towards him, or even most embarrassingly: their semen—and he cannot even know for certain if they had known this would happen.

He will have to wait years until they are awake again to ask them, because even if he does find them hidden down below he doesn’t know how he would go about waking them up early. 

Although sometimes when his blood is up from a fight and his sharpened teeth are hidden behind closed lips because he cannot stand for anyone to see, not even someone who might re-think their wicked plans if they saw that Batman’s teeth had become fang-like, he thinks that if anything could rouse them out of slumber, it would be a bite. 

Joker is not often spoken about, but he is not forgotten. A common theory is that he’d been arrested for something minor and that the police—having never seen him out of his greasepaint and having no fingerprints or DNA evidence or dental records of him—had not recognized him. There is a lingering concern that someday he will return, even more awful and extravagant due to his time spent locked away. Even more eager to show off.

Bruce will think of Joker—Jeremiah and Jerome; his, as much as he was theirs. His problem to deal with, in any case—and will run his tongue over teeth that feel sharpened from the onset of irritation, and if the lights begin to flicker he will close his eyes and breathe, and they will glow steadily again.

He is thirty when the first year of their sleep passes by with no others being wiser to the date.

He is thirty when Selina decides to jokingly comment that despite all the stress of his life which should rightfully be making him go grey well before his time, he looks remarkably well for his age, even when considering that socialite billionaire Bruce Wayne had access to expensive cosmetic treatments and anti-aging miracles and plastic surgery. 

He stares at himself in the mirror for what feels like hours that night, trying to remember the sight of his reflection years ago, while he was still away from home. He supposes that he looks good for his age, but there were multiple factors that could be responsible for that: good genetics, and his diet, and his exercise regime, and—

The bathroom lights almost gutter out, and he glares upwards.

Stop, he thinks, not closing his eyes and breathing to calm himself, too much tightly coiling distress inside of him to be settled. Stop. Stop. _Stop._

The lights stop sputtering and instead start burning brighter, the wiring inside glowing white-hot. Bruce sucks in a breath through his teeth and hisses it out slowly, and as he exhales the lights dim to their normal brightness. 

He takes a photo of himself—with a specific date and time and location and lighting—in order to compare it to himself next year, and the year after, and the year after.

He cannot allow himself to grow apprehensive over something that he does not know for certain.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One more down, one to go, when will this update? ~~I don't know.~~ That depends on what life decides to throw at me this week, haaa.

He drags his hand over the rough stone arch from where he is knelt before it, an act that is more reverent than he initially means for it to be.

There is always water in the tunnels—sometimes up to his chest, sometimes deep enough that it is easier to swim than to walk—because every storm drain in Gotham guides water underground to be diverted into the water treatment plant before going back into the river, but when there is enough overflow it naturally follows gravity down the deepest paths.

A summer heatwave had begun to dry things up; the past several times that Bruce had walked down into the tunnel entrance—the first one that he found, the one that he called them towards to make their deal, the one that he used most often—there had been no water sliding alongside his boots during the descent. Week by week, inch by inch, things that had once been concealed had started to come out of hiding. Then a powerful storm had begun to brew over Gotham, as if to cover everything back up again with a deluge of fresh rainwater. 

By chance, or perhaps by fate, the water was sucked up not by the drains but by the roots of Poison Ivy’s newest batch of vicious plants. They had sprung up swiftly and grown with the water, seeming to soak it up like sponges. Even now, a week later, people were cutting away and burning the leftover husks of it. 

Thus the storm which might have flooded everything all over again had had very little impact on the underground tunnels, and as the heatwave continued Bruce had found something.

A small doorway, previously hidden by water that had reached his waist. Even now, knelt before it as he is, the water’s surface rests halfway up the height of it. It had been even higher yesterday, and as Bruce had begun to crawl into it he’d felt the path begin to take a downward slope and—not knowing how deep it would go, or what he would find at the end of the path—he had turned back in order to return a day later, this time with goggles, a diving mask, and a small canister of oxygen.

There is a crackling in his ear—no matter how advanced the technology they used was, his connection to Alfred once he’d stepped into the tunnels was never as clear as it ought to have been—and he pauses in his preparations, waiting.

“—uce. Master Bruce. The clouds are—roll in. I suspect—to rain—the hour.”

There will be no second stroke of luck to keep the water out of the tunnels. 

“Thank you, Alfred,” he responds. “I’ll be making my way back out shortly.”

He just has to explore this one thing, before the chance is lost to him.

He places everything that he doesn’t need inside his waterproof pack and sets it against the water-covered floor, not wanting to bring along anything that might end up getting caught and trapping him. He connects the oxygen canister to his mask, turns the dial to open the valve, and puts it on along with his goggles.

He begins to crawl. The path dips. The water rises. To his shoulders, to his chin, to his ears, over his head.

He keeps his breathing steady, the waterproof headlamp of his helmet providing a small amount of comfort as he is completely submerged in a tunnel underground where no one would ever find him if he got stuck and if he got trapped or couldn’t turn back around he would suffocate and—

The path begins to turn upwards, gently at first, then sharply, until there is not a path at all but instead a small pool that Bruce swims to the surface of, breaking through the water and quickly pulling himself up onto the solid ground of a steep incline, climbing further until he reaches a point where the earth begins to flatten out. He takes off his goggles and mask, and closes the valve on his oxygen canister, and then he finally begins to look around.

Before him is a deep, expansive groove in the earth, like the landing site of a meteorite. The light of his headlamp doesn’t even reach the other side of the cave that he’s found himself in. Bruce begins to look up, not entirely sure what he’s expecting, because he knows that there must be rock over his head even if it is too far up for his headlamp to reach. 

Far, far above him there are are—

His breath catches.

—dim speckles of light—

He turns off his headlamp, immediate and instinctive. 

—like alien stars. Strange, but not entirely unfamiliar. 

He lays on his back, staring up at them. He does not have time to search the entirety of this cave for any other exits, not with rain on its way. He cannot linger for so long that he risks his ability to get back out again. He probably should not linger at all, as the new storm rolling in promised even more rainfall than the last one. Still, he lays with his eyes focused upwards. 

There is something about this place which makes him feel closer to them than he has ever been while searching the tunnels. 

The site where a meteorite once smashed against the Earth. 

_Close enough, on this planet._

“You love me,” he finds himself saying out loud. He does that, sometimes; speak to himself while traversing their tunnels on the off chance that his voice will carry down paths and through walls and into their dreams. Maybe, if they knew that he was looking for them, they would wake up. “And sometimes I wish that it was in a way I that could understand.” He stares up at the distant lights, and they almost seem to faintly grow brighter and fade in time to his breathing. “Maybe then I’d be able to make sense of…” Himself, and his own feelings, a little better. 

Maybe, if he understood them more—not that they had ever been overly forthcoming with information regarding themselves, and not that he had cared much to learn because it was very difficult to get past their _hunting and eating_ of people to want to know anything further—he would be able to comprehend why, after everything, they had left him behind to go back to sleep.

It’s in their nature, he thinks hollowly. He is more sad than angry, in the moment, though his emotions towards them were always an unpredictable swirl. 

But it wasn’t in their nature to love, or at least, to love someone like him. Human. Prey. If they could go against their nature for that—if they could mimic human acts of affection in an attempt to give him something that he could fathom—then couldn’t they have stayed awake at least for long enough to explain to him—

The anger begins to overtake the sadness.

—what the fuck was happening to him?

He sighs heavily, and the anger sputters out.

When he leaves the cave behind the rain has already begun to fall. The water level slowly creeps higher over the course of his two-hour journey. It rushes against his legs and calves as he makes his way up, up, up, the depth and force of it in some sections is enough for him to have to actively brace himself against it. He even slips, once, nearer to the surface, catching himself with his gloved hands. If his skin had been bare…

He stands up and stares at the deep scratches left behind on his gloves. 

If his skin had been bare, it would have torn up against the rough rock below him, his open palms briefly seeping blood into the water…

He had almost been certain that, this time, he was going to find them.

Back when he had not known the seemingly limitless extent of the twisting paths of the tunnels below the surface he had been sure that whatever was in the water would reach them. He is far less sure of it, now, knowing that there are so many branches and diversions and places for water to pool and grow stagnant without ever coming near wherever they had hidden themselves away to sleep. Still…

He had thought, more than a few times, that a bite would be enough to wake them up if he ever managed to come across their sleeping forms. But if he could not find them, maybe there was something else that he could do…

Quickly, before he can start to second guess himself, he pulls off one of his gloves and takes out a small folding knife. He drags it against his palm and holds his hand under the rush of fresh rain-water, until the sting of the constant agitation to broken skin has completely faded. When he pulls his hand back out, the skin is unbroken. 

“Wake up for me, you utter bastards,” he demands under his breath. “It’s the least you could do, after everything that you’ve put me and my city through.”

For Joker to rise up ahead of schedule would bring pandemonium and panic to Gotham, but Bruce would deal with them; his monsters, his problems, his Jerome and Jeremiah. He is stronger, now, than he ever was before.

And he is no longer wary of following after them into the tunnels should he have to, because the paths have become familiar to him, and he knows dozens of ways out, and his line and line markers are irrefutable proof of all the time that he has spent down here without a tragedy befalling him. 

When the steps out of their tunnel and into the man-made structure of the sewer the earpiece in his ear crackles, once, and then as clear as day Alfred’s voice informs him of an Arkham breakout, and he has no time to linger and think of them anymore than he already has. 

He rushes the rest of the way to the surface. 

And unbeknownst to him, far below the city, there is a stirring.

They who hunt and eat and sleep and love the only way that they know how have been restless in their slumber. They have drifted close to wakefulness as they had once before, the yearning desire to take, take, take igniting a now-familiar heat inside the depths of them as they dreamt. Their unconscious minds reach out to _him_ always, preserving the link between them even as they are separate. 

“You love me.” They hear as they sleep, and they feel a melancholy which is not their own. He is close. They can feel his nearness. He is close.

They have missed him. 

“You love me.” They see his face in their dreams, his expression shifting. There is anger and acceptance and bemusement and sorrow. “And sometimes I wish…” His voice begins to fade; he begins to fade. In their dreams their clawed hands try to grasp him, but he slips between their fingers like water, rippling and translucent, then completely gone. They are left so close to waking with their desire to connect with him again; in their dreams they begin to call his name, but he does not reappear. 

They are still in a period of agitated, shallow sleep when the faint scent of fresh, familiar blood reaches them.

x-x-x

Bruce is tired in the way he always tends to be when a long day transitions into a longer night. As infamous as Batman had seemed to become to criminals over his few years of being active in Gotham thus far, there was still sometimes a terrible shock when his presence descended upon them from where he’d been silently looming above. 

Especially if—to quicken things along—Bruce slowly but surely plunged them all into darkness. 

Fear made people sloppy and easier to catch. Batman—to criminals, at least—was a symbol that brought about trepidation and unease. Batman in action could reduce adults to terrible screams, if he felt that it was worth it or that it was deserved. There were rumours spreading that he was not a man in a suit at all but instead something paranormal, occult, monstrous in nature and unable to be killed. Gotham’s Dark Knight, summoned by the city itself. He’d heard the whisperings of it and had wondered if anyone had ever spoken of _Joker_ —the actual sinister, otherworldly beings—as if they weren’t human. 

To criminals Batman was a symbol of darkness and terror. Though he could not taste fear, and would not want to even if he were capable of it, sometimes he was sure that he could sense it in the air.

To the rest of the city Batman was becoming something else. Like the signal that Jim Gordon would shine into the night sky as a beacon; he was hope. He was light—moonlight; subdued but watchful and protective—because he guarded against the terrible things that hid away in the dark until the sun could rise again. They might have thought of him as a monster too, but he was _their_ monster. An urban legend come to life. The one trick up Gotham’s sleeve that could even the odds between the multiple rouge elements within the city and everyone else.

He removes his cowl, becoming Bruce Wayne once again, and he finds his thoughts lingering upon Jerome and Jeremiah, as if he is still sentimental from his time spent in the tunnels. As if he still feels that closeness that he had felt when he had been in that cave, looking up at distant, dim lights that appeared like stars that he had never seen from Earth but which were familiar to him, regardless.

Bruce used to think that, somewhere out there in the great expanse of the universe, there was a force that balanced the twins out—if they brought darkness and horror, then something else must have brought light and happiness—but as time passes he finds himself wondering more and more often if _he_ is what balances them out.

If it was always meant to be _him_ to balance them out. 

They had told him more than once that he had been made for them, so sure of themselves as they said it, and what if…

What if there was a grain of truth to that? What if the path that he had chosen for himself which turned him into Gotham’s protector had been not only his destiny, but _their_ destinies, intertwined with each other?

Didn’t that make sense?

The twins had been intrigued by him because he was different, even as a child. He had grown, finding his way down the hazardous route which lead to the conceptualization of Batman, and their interest in him had flourished. And even as Batman, Joker had pushed him and tested him and forced him to become better, all with a smile and a laugh and a desire to see what he could do and how far he could go.

Perhaps Bruce is left overly-nostalgic for the few-and-far-between tender moments that they had shared where he felt as if he belonged in the space between them—outnumbered incredibly by traps and fights and disturbing ploys for his attention—but it is almost as if they complete each other.

Maybe they had been drawn to him because, even before Bruce had reached true self-actualization, they could sense that he was the one thing on this planet that _could_ , in some way, complete them. 

His lips twist at the almost romantic notion of it, not a smile or a grimace but something in between, and he begins to strip out of the rest of his suit. 

There is no whisper of movement, no shifting shadows, no flash of caustic-green, no sign of they who have years left to sleep. 

And yet—

He breaks out into goosebumps.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry that this took (what felt _to me_ to be) a small eternity, but it's essentially a December miracle that this happened at all, haaaaa. I am Tired now and must Rest, see y'all in the new year.

Bruce is attuned to danger as a necessity; to get through his unorthodox childhood into his unpredictable adolescence into his even more dangerous adulthood. He remains ever-attentive because there are more people out for his blood, now, than there have ever been before. He knows what danger feels like. He knows when someone is looking at him with the intent to try and rip him to shreds.

He turns, eyes roving, heart in his throat not because he is afraid but because of something else entirely.

Bruce is attuned to _them_ , too; after so much exposure, so much attention, so much teasing and fighting and luring. His thoughts had been lingering upon them even after leaving the tunnels, even as he was trying to bring all of the Arkham escapees back in, even as the night drew to a close with a few still out there, low-profile enough that he was confident that the police could handle the rest on their own. They have been in the back of his mind, as they so often are. So present within his own head that he hadn’t noticed anything amiss. They hadn’t been gone from his thoughts for long enough to reappear so suddenly that it felt significant. 

The lights do not flicker and the shadows do not grow. There is no laughter and no flashes of green. He is, by all appearances, alone.

But he knows, without a doubt, that he is not. Not anymore. 

Something in his chest twists sharply. 

Not alone anymore. Not them, not him. 

He opens his mouth to fill the sudden, stifling silence of the cave. There are so many things for him to say—angry theories and curious demands and, most damningly of all, an admittance that things hadn’t been the same without them—that his mind begins to race just as quickly as his heart.

He hears something clatter to the floor, and when he turns to look he sees small splashes of colour. Several of his line markers are strewn about, cheerily bright against dark stone.

And then—because he knows them, he does, and he knows exactly how much they like to sneak up on him by drawing his attention somewhere else and springing up from behind him—he whirls back around and catches only the barest glimpse of colour that does not fit in with the dull palette of cave before he lashes out and—

Makes contact.

Solid and real and _here_. Sucking in a startled breath because Jerome had evidently thought that _this time_ would be the time that he’d finally be able to sneak up on Bruce with Bruce unaware of it until he was already captured and trapped and _held_ , instead of Bruce managing to dig an elbow forcefully into his ribs. 

Jerome’s eyes meet his, and despite the obvious shock that Bruce had moved so quickly and lashed out at him his smile grows wide.

“That was uncalled for,” he chides; teasing, _fond._

There is a beat—a stillness full of an expectation, a suspense that Bruce isn’t sure how to properly address—and a rush of air, and the old-new-expected sensation of someone-some _thing_ -one of _them_ sneaking up behind him. And of course there is, because neither one of them could ever stand to leave Bruce alone for long when there was a confrontation to be had and his attention—whether good or bad, tender or violent—to be gained. 

He turns again, hands reaching and grabbing and pushing. Eyes locking with the vivid green that haunts and follows and watches him even when he dreams. He and Jeremiah both fall to the floor, though Jeremiah doesn’t look particularly bothered to be pinned underneath of him. His smile widens, too, because of course it does.

Of course it does.

“You,” Bruce grits through his teeth, hands clenching in the fabric of Jeremiah’s jacket. He is without his cowl and they are without their greasepaint. They are not Batman and Joker right now; they are Bruce and Jeremiah and Jerome and it feels like puzzle pieces falling into place even if it simultaneously means that Gotham is about to erupt with the madness and fear that follows in the wake of Jeremiah and Jerome whenever they are active.

You, you, you, he thinks, blood rushing and heart thrumming. You woke up early.

And that had been what he wanted, hadn’t it? In order to get answers, yes, but also…

But also… 

“Good morning, Bruce.” Jeremiah reaches up, his hand cradling the side of Bruce’s face. “You were looking for us.” The line markers, the lines, the proof that Bruce had spent hours upon hours and days upon days underground, making his way through tunnels which no other human had ever made it out alive from. “Did you miss us?”

“Whether I did or didn’t matters little now that you’re here, don’t you think?” Bruce responds, carefully keeping his voice flat. Jeremiah must already know the answer, he was just being pushy, as per usual, when it came to wanting Bruce to verbally acknowledge every little thing between them. Bruce turns his head sharply, narrowing his eyes at Jerome who only smirks and slinks closer, eager to be remembered. When Bruce looks back at Jeremiah’s face his expression is all mock-sorrow, as if Bruce’s avoidant answers had ever been a source of despair and not something that could be taken as a challenge to drive him crazy until he had to acknowledge and respond to Jeremiah’s questions directly. “Though, since you’ve mentioned it…”

His hands fist tighter in the lapels of Jeremiah’s jacket. Maybe, if he were more angry—or less attached to them—he’d be ringing his hands around Jeremiah’s throat instead. Violence never made them pause for very long, though, and hurting them or spilling their blood only ever seemed to ignite a heated interest inside of them, because Bruce was the only one who could do anything to them that could cause lasting damage.

Perhaps there is something distantly, horrifically romantic about that.

“Since you are awake—” His grip becomes loose and he twists, grabbing onto one of Jerome’s reaching hands and pulling hard until he stumbles to the floor alongside his brother. They gaze up at Bruce as if he is something extraordinary, and he tries not to become flustered from attention which he by all accounts should not want to be the focus of. “—I do have a question for you.” Something that he can’t put a name to is crackling under his skin. Electric. Wild. He’s not sure if it’s all of his emotions welling up now that they’re here with him again, or if it’s because of their proximity, or if it’s something else entirely. Maybe, now that they’re here, he will become even more like the urban legend that Gotham citizens think that he is. Maybe he will begin to sink into shadows and watch with eyes that eerily shine and become less and less human with each passing day. 

But at least he will not be lonely through it all.

He cradles their jaws in his hands, tight, because he is too wound up to be gentle. Because he’s not sure if right now it would pain him to be gentle. Because they revel in his harshness just as much as his softness. Because he’s not sure what the other option could possibly be other than to run his hands into their hair and greet them with a soft ‘good morning’ and lean down to kiss them one by one.

At least with all of his emotions running rampant it is only too easy to latch onto his anger, closing his eyes and breathing as he feels his teeth shift and extrude ever so slightly. 

“Did you know what would happen?” His voice is low, soft. He’s able to hold back the accusatory tone for now but he’s honestly not sure if he’ll be able to for very long. It all depends on their reactions, really. “When you went to sleep, did you know—” His mouth opens wider, and it’s not a smile at all, just a display; showcasing teeth that do not belong in what should be a human mouth, if he truly is fully human any more. “—that I was going to start changing?”

Do you know if it’s because of you?

Or is it because I was never really ordinary in the first place?

Was I made for you, or maybe it was you who were made for me, and time messed up along the way so that you just happened to exist here first?

He probably shouldn’t be surprised that Jerome’s immediate reaction to seeing sharpened teeth is to reach out and press his fingers against them, as if to gauge their honed tips for himself. Bruce almost feels the urge to bite him for his flippant intrusion, but he knows that that would only turn the current situation into something else entirely.

A situation that, if he were to be completely honest with himself, he wouldn’t entirely mind. 

“They suit you,” Jerome says, something like wonder in his voice and something like adoration in his gaze. 

That doesn’t answer Bruce’s question, which is perhaps what he gets for not directly answer _their_ questions. Still, he doesn’t appreciate the evasiveness. The lights in the cave flicker; just for a few seconds. It’s him, not them, and all of them realize it. 

Jeremiah reaches out to touch his cheek again, and Jerome’s fingers finally withdraw from his teeth to drag down his chin and throat, resting in the hollow as if to feel his fluttering pulse. The affection behind their touches begins to take the wind out of Bruce’s sails.

They do not seem overly surprised, but they are not cackling in victory, either. Perhaps they suspected that something might start happening to him, but they couldn’t be sure. Not with no one around for them to ask. Not with Bruce being the singularity that he was. 

He sighs, and his tight grip on them begins to unclamp. He is worn out from his time spent in the tunnels which was immediately followed by—

—dealing with the Arkham breakout. Not everyone had been apprehended when he’d begun to return home. There were inmates who had been low-profile enough that he hadn’t felt the need to stick around after the sun had begun to crest over the horizon. 

People were going to think that Joker had been locked away after all, impossible to recognize when he wasn’t made up in his greasepaint and flashy outfits. His monsters are going to be wreaking havoc as soon as they possibly can, he can tell, he knows it, that’s just how they are.

It’s in their nature. 

Thankfully it is in his nature to oppose them.

Not that he is doing much to oppose them right now. They are laid out before him, not making the slightest attempts to get away. Perhaps they are savouring the time before they find themselves at odds with him all over again. Perhaps they are committing this moment of relative peace to memory. Perhaps they are waiting for him to make a move or speak, putting the control into his hands.

He looks upon them, their relaxed faces sparking a warmth that he could immerse himself into inside of his chest.

Bruce had missed them, even if the city had been calmer without them.

He ducks down, quick and quiet, and presses a kiss to the corner of Jerome’s scarred mouth and Jeremiah’s coloured mouth. 

Their eyes spark, hungry in the wake of any sign of affection from him, but he won’t let that derail him. 

“I’m not scared of you.” He hasn’t been scared for a long time. “And I won’t hesitate to follow you into the tunnels anymore.” He has been down there for countless hours, now. He is not worried about getting trapped, or lost, or caged inside. “I won’t let you eat people.” Last time it had been so hard, picking and choosing who to save because of the crushing feeling that going in after them when they were planning to eat would only end with him falling directly into their hands, unable to escape. “I’ll stop you every time.” In order for them to successfully hunt they needed the fear and terror from those they had chosen as prey, they needed the buildup, they needed _time_. They couldn't just go snatching people off of the street every night without bothering to do what they did best.

They needed time, and so Bruce would have the time he needed to make sure that no one was eaten alive.

“You would starve us?”

“You feast upon fear just as you feast upon flesh.” He doesn’t know if it’s actually possible for them to starve to death, but the thought of it makes his heart twinge in pain at the idea of being alone again. “I’ll stop you from carrying out your usual hunts, but there are other ways for you to sate your hunger, aren’t there?” He’s gone through records—missing person cases and assumed runaways and murders that were so vicious it seemed like they’d been committed by a rabid animal and not a human—and the previous cycle, where they’d focused their attention not only on _hunting_ but on causing chaos and crime and stealing Batman’s attention, no matter how wrought with fear and villainy it had been, had had markedly less people vanishing off of the face of the earth. “Joker never concentrated only on eating, did he?” They had gained something from their time thwarting him as a public menace, some of the gnawing hunger within them had abated through the attention and drama and mass-panic that they were able to create merely by showing their faces and watching Gotham citizens run to get as far away as possible. Not to mention the way that they thrived whenever they had Bruce’s full attention. “I’ll buy you entire cows to eat, if you’re so worried about going hungry.” 

Jeremiah’s lips twitch, Jerome huffs out a low laugh, and Bruce rises to his feet. He watches as they follow suit, graceful and nonchalant as if he hadn’t forced them to the ground at all.

“Or you could let us feast upon you.” Jeremiah’s smile is nothing short of indecent. “There has never been anything so satisfying as that.”

“Or anything so sweet,” Jerome drawls, his own grin stretching abnormally wide.

Bruce resists the urge to roll his eyes, although he feels that the action would be more fond than irritated. They are back, with him, and maybe that is how it’s meant to be. He stays silent, mostly because he cannot find it in himself to voice an outright denial, and they know him well enough to read behind the lines of any noncommittal answers that he might give them. They draw closer in the meantime, and after so long it feels right to be so near them again.

“Soon we’ll make a grand entrance,” Jerome tells him. “You’ll want to rest up for it.”

“Batman and Joker,” Jeremiah sighs, as if in longing, and his breath wafts over Bruce’s face. “The world will watch us and will tremble. You’re the only thing that will hold us back, but we won’t let it be easy for you.”

“I wouldn’t expect you to.” The challenge was always something that they took enjoyment in. Bruce leans towards them, his sharp edges softening and his lingering irritation fading. They’ll make him angry again, undoubtedly, just as many times as they’ll make him happy. For now, though, he is pleased that they are back.

Things hadn’t been the same without them.

He licks his lips and breathes in, eyes fluttering shut.

When he speaks again names that are not human drip from his mouth, without any of the blood that used to accompany his attempts to mimic the sounds. 

He is different, now.

But, then again, he would have been different even without them to push him even further along. 

“I won’t go easy on you, either,” he promises, and a smile pulls at his lips. The thrill of a challenge is not something he thinks he experiences in the exact same way as them, but there is something to be said about the excitement of being kept on your toes. “I hope that you’re ready.” 

Batman isn’t just a man in a suit anymore, after all; he’s an urban legend come to life. 

“We are,” Jeremiah says, drawing even closer.

“We are,” Jerome says, leaning in. 

They are so close that it would take only the slightest of movements to kiss them again.

Their grand entrance will undoubtedly be the sort of thing that leaves Bruce feeling like he ought to pummel them into the ground, but it hasn’t happened _yet._ He reaches out, trailing his hands into their hair, and watches as they loosen even further under his touch. Bruce and his monsters, reunited.

The connection between them grows stronger, still, as if their breaths and heartbeats and consciousnesses have synchronized. Bruce allows his eyes to fall half-shut and tilts his chin upwards, waiting.

He doesn’t have to wait for long.


End file.
